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Reading a short story during my commute, I came across the the word "queendom", as opposed to "kingdom".

I thought it would be an interesting question or exercise to try to translate this word into Spanish, since the Spanish words for king and queen (rey and reina, respectively) are so similar that is a challenge to deconstruct "reino" etymologically and reconstruct it in a way that a "queendom" is unambiguously distinguishable from "kingdom".

Update: Context for this question.

Once there was a young princess who, when she grew tired of beating her head against the male power structure at her castle, would relax by walking into the woods and sitting beside a small pond [...]

One day, while she was envisioning the utopia that her queendom could become if womyn were in the positions of power [...]

Extract from Politically Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life and Times, a 1994 book written by American writer James Finn Garner.

To clarify further, this question tries to put you in the shoes of the translator, having to find a word in Spanish for "queendom", having to preserve the connotations of a queendom of being a queen-centric and not a king-centric (male-centric) form of rulership.

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  • Por si acaso: etimología de "reino" en etimologias de Chile: "reino, territorio que manda un rey, viene del latín regnum =territorio del rey" y en wikcionario: Del castellano antiguo reyno, y este del latín regnum, a su vez de rex, "rey"
    – Diego
    Commented Jan 9, 2020 at 15:07
  • Al parecer queendom fue una serie de tele y no se ha traducido el título al castellano, lo verían complicado :) Hay una lista de posibles traducciones que variarían según el contexto. Divas es una que me gusta, pero claro, dependería de cuándo se usa.
    – fedorqui
    Commented Jan 9, 2020 at 15:21
  • Esta pregunta parece perfecta para el tag concurso-de-popularidad que propuse no hace mucho... :-)
    – Charlie
    Commented Jan 9, 2020 at 15:35
  • I doubt seriously that this is about monarchy. How about you post the sentence? In gay slang, queen is a term used to refer to a flamboyant or effeminate gay man. The term can either be pejorative or celebrated as a type of self-identification. Wikipedia. And queendom is a made up word.|| Why did you link to the word commute??
    – Lambie
    Commented Jan 9, 2020 at 15:36
  • @Lambie Diego read it in a short story, so the context is probably clear and has nothing to do with gay slang but with the domains of a queen. The funny thing is how such a made up word can be adapted into Spanish. The link in "commute" is to a previous question in this site where we tried to translate the word into Spanish.
    – Charlie
    Commented Jan 9, 2020 at 15:42

4 Answers 4

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My suggestion is

reinarquía

It's a parody of

monarquía

It's a little weak because, when heard, the distinction between rey and reina could be lost; but it comes close to capturing the humour in the original.

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  • The word reinarquía actually sounds quite cool, it's a nice option, but it's not exactly the word the OP wanted to adapt. Nonetheless, if I were to translate the work into Spanish this would be a good choice, trying to adapt the sentence to use reinarquía instead of queendom.
    – Charlie
    Commented Jan 13, 2020 at 13:34
  • Brilliant... inspired.
    – aparente001
    Commented Jan 13, 2020 at 16:13
  • I'm going to accept this as best answer, even if the other ones also have merit. The word "reinarquía" might not be as closely related to "queendom" as other option, but it is the one that works the best in case we had to use it for the Spanish translation of the book. It is "self sufficient" enough so we don't need to explain what it is, and with the context of the book/story, it would be perfectly understood and convey, as closely as possible, what "queendom" wanted to imply.
    – Diego
    Commented Jan 14, 2020 at 11:49
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Reino. There is no equivalent in Spanish, I would use 'dominios de la reina' or 'terrenos de la reina' or 'estado de la reina', but none of them sound 100% correct

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    It is a made-up, nonce word in English....
    – Lambie
    Commented Jan 9, 2020 at 15:33
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    I don't see how "dominios de la reina" or "terrenos de la reina" sounds incorrect. It's 100% valid
    – luso
    Commented Jan 10, 2020 at 10:03
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I'm not entirely convinced, but given that Spanish rey comes from Latin rex, which gave regnum (Spanish reino), then from Latin regina (Spanish reina) we could have reginanum that could give a hypothetical Spanish reginano, or maybe a simplified version such as régino, or even reinano, closer to reina.

But none of those words sounds as cool as queendom, nor is its meaning evident. Maybe the last one is more evident but sounds terrible to me. Maybe we should try with a synomym for reina.

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    I think reinano has the best pedigree even if it sounds terrible to you. To be honest queendom does not sound that good to me even ignoring the possibility of confusion due to multiple meaning of queen in English
    – mdewey
    Commented Jan 9, 2020 at 18:18
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    @mdewey to me, the problem is that reinano sounds like a mixture of reinado and enano.
    – Charlie
    Commented Jan 10, 2020 at 11:04
  • @Charlie what about "réinano" with an accent then?
    – wimi
    Commented Jan 10, 2020 at 16:42
  • @wimi I would prefer régino then, it's closer to reino, sounds better and does not create confusion, although its etymology is more obscure.
    – Charlie
    Commented Jan 10, 2020 at 16:45
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El dominio de [la] reina

Estaba imaginando la utopía que podría llegar a ser el dominio de reina.

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