Mar 28, 2005

How Did Los Angeles Get Its Name?

by Cliopatria

The name of the game is historical accuracy. Everyone agrees on that.

What historians cannot agree on is the name given to Los Angeles when its Spanish founders formed it Sept. 4, 1781.

The early settlers meant to name the town after angels; that much is known. But for more than 75 years, local historians have been quarreling over its actual moniker.

Some contend it was El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de los Angeles.

Others assert it was El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reyna de los Angeles.

Or perhaps it was El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de los Angeles de la Porciuncula. Or El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reyna de los Angeles del Rio Porciuncula. Or maybe El Pueblo de la Reina de los Angeles Sobre el Rio de Porciuncula. Or Pueblo del Rio de Nuestra Señora la Reyna de los Angeles de Porciuncula.

How about plain old Ciudad de los Angeles?

History books, scholarly papers, encyclopedia entries and bronze plaques scattered around the downtown Olvera Street plaza to commemorate the city's birthplace use differing versions of the name.

And now the Historical Society of Southern California has produced a book in hopes of settling the dispute once and for all.

Fat chance. Or as the founding fathers might have put it: Ni cuando!

Instead, publication of "The Founding Documents of Los Angeles, A Bilingual Edition," has only intensified the debate among historians about the city's true first name — even pitting its editor against a longtime friend who thinks his thesis is wrong.

The book is a farewell project of longtime Los Angeles historian Doyce B. Nunis Jr. He retired this month after 43 years as editor of the historical society's respected journal, the Southern California Quarterly.

"The Spanish named Los Angeles El Pueblo de la Reyna de los Angeles. That means 'the town of the Queen of Angels,' " Nunis said.

Thumbing through the book to Page 158, he pointed to a reproduction of a 220-year-old map from UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library.

"You see it at the top of the map, 'El Pueblo de la Reyna de los Angeles.' That's the name on the first handwritten map in 1785. You have to look at the original documents, and that's what we've done. The name is right there." The map uses "Reyna"; other sources spell it "Reina."

The bronze plaque at the Olvera Street plaza beneath the statue of Spanish King Carlos III, who ordered "the founding of El Pueblo de la Reina de los Angeles in 1781," is correct, Nunis said.

But a few steps away, the founder's plaque, which calls the city El Pueblo de la Reina de los Angeles Sobre el Rio de Porciuncula — "the town of the Queen of Angels on the Porciuncula River" — is wrong, according to Nunis.

So is the inscription on the plaque beneath Felipe de Neve's statue, which describes him as "founder of El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles." Not to mention the inscription on the carved wooden cross at the top of Olvera Street, which also refers in Spanish to "the town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels."

Nunis blames much of the confusion on an early Franciscan priest who helped establish California's chain of missions and in the mid-19th century wrote about his and Father Junipero Serra's experiences.

Father Francisco Palou described how early settlers founded the future "town of Nuestra Señora de los Angeles on the banks of the river named Porciuncula."

"The culprit was Palou. It was an honest mistake. But the pueblo was never called that," Nunis said. "It was called El Pueblo de la Reyna de los Angeles."...