Unknown Spanish words on a 19th century gravestone

Question

I'm translating a Spanish gravestone from 1865 and I am stuck on one word. The inscription includes a verse or prayer that begins with the word "Onava." I can't find this word in any of my Spanish dictionaries. I've looked very closely at the inscription and I am confident that the spelling is "Onava." I'm wondering if it is a misspelling of "Orava" which could be a phonetic spelling of "Oraba" meaning "Prayed." However, I'm wondering if it could be an archaic Spanish word and my (very basic) Spanish is limited to the contemporary language. Google came up with nothing. Does anyone know?

The full text of the inscription, with my translation:

Onava. [???]

Contempla bien, pasajero, [Consider well, passerby]

Este lugar silencioso; [This silent place]

Yace en él un buen esposo, [Here lies a good husband,]

Buen amigo hombre sincero. [Good friend, sincere man.]

Si estas prendas tu fé abouan, [If these items buoy your faith]

Alza tu súplica al cielo. [Raise your prayers to the sky]

Y pide á Dios dé consuelo [And ask God that he may give comfort]

A los deudos que lo lloran. [to the bereaved who weep for him.]

• I'm also unsure about the word "prendas" - the most common meaning is "garment" but I think it context it must have the secondary meaning of items that are given as a pledge.

• I think that "abouan" must be an older spelling of "aboyan" which would mean "float" (with a buoy) so I translated it as "buoy".

Muchas gracias!

Note: You can see the complete gravestone here.

Answer 1

Just to leave all the comments written in an answer, let's start this community wiki post. First of all, you can find information about Simon Mesa's grave in the web Find a grave. There you can find other pictures and information about relatives. Neither the wife nor the daughter carry the name "Onava", although it seems to be a surname used there, you can find some companies like "Aluminios Onava" or even a real state agency. Another theory is that it could be the name of a plant, you can find the word onava in the Fichero general from the RAE web, a single file will tell you that it referred to Ehretia virgata or Ehretia acuminata. A wild guess would be that it is a misspelling of the word octava, as the following poem is indeed a composition of eight verses. The composition transcription is as follows:

Contempla bien, pasajero,
Este lugar silencioso;
Yace en él un buen esposo,
Buen amigo hombre sincero.
Si estas prendas tu fé abonan,
Alza tu súplica al cielo,
Y pide á Dios dé consuelo
A los deudos que lo lloran.

The reason to write abonan is that it seems that sometimes the n was written with a u as in the word consuelo right at the end of the previous text.

On the other hand, we don't usually accept translations from Spanish into English, but given that you have already provided an attempt of translation, let's try to make some amendments:

Behold, passerby,
This silent place;
Here lies a good husband,
Good friend, sincere man.
If these goods¹ make your faith grow,
Send your prayers to the Heavens,
And ask God that He may give comfort
to the family that weeps for him.

If you think the translation can be improved, please make any further corrections to avoid misinterpreting any word from Mexican Spanish.

---

¹ _{Spanish prenda can be translated as "jewel" given the translation offered for Mexico in the Diccionario de americanismos. Nonetheless, the Spanish dictionary also states that prenda may mean "something given as proof of something". So the translation could also be "if these proofs...". I (Charlie) made the decision of translating it as "goods" as a middle point between "proof" and "jewel", given that the man was described both as a "good husband" and a "good man", hence the "goods".}