16 October 03

Californian Place Names

This post is a contribution to the Ecotone Wiki’s joint blogging topic, Place Names.

The European colonization of California was at first northward expansion, from New Spain (Mexico), of Franciscan Missions. The tribes encountered by the friars already had names for the places they lived in, paddled to, the rivers they fished from, the woodlands whose acorns they ate. A lot of these names still survive-near here, for example, Napa, Sonoma, and Petaluma are all indigenous namesbut for the most part California as far north as Sonoma, which is where the northernmost mission is located, is a quilt of Spanishand often Catholic-place names. San Francisco. Santa Maria. [Sagrado] Sacramento. [Nuestra Seora de] Los Angeles, the largest city in the world dedicated to Our Lady.

Above Sonoma there are another 300 miles of California, and along the coast, where there were Russian outpost colonies in the eighteenth century, we have the interesting juxtaposition of Sebastopol next to Santa Rosa.

Then the Gold Rush ushered in the new waves of English, Germans, French, Spanish, and other Europeans, who turned to farming when the gold was gone. The small farming communities around here have mostly English names. Davis, originally Davisville, was named after a prominent farmer here in the late 19th century. (Vacaville, the most absurd place name I can think of in the vicinity-literally, “cow town” in Spanish then French-was named after a Mr. Vaca.) Arranged on a neat, orderly grid, Davis streets were named First, Second, and Third, with the cross streets the logical A, B, and C, and so on, which allow for expansion as needed, at least as far as the twenty-sixth letter.

New housing developments, however, eschew this pleasant logic and instead impose an arbitrary conglomeration of theme names, Disney-fashion. Thus, in Davis, we have the “college” neighborhood (Rutgers, Villanova, Radcliffe); the “painters” neighborhood (Picasso, Gaugin, Manet); the “bird” neighborhood (Mockingbird, Sandpiper, Pintail); and the “golf” neighborhood (Fairway, Country Club, Greenview). You get extra points for figuring out the relative socioeconomic status of the inhabitants.

There is one Davis neighborhood, however, whose street names are on a theme I find quite tickling. Village Homes, where we stayed back in spring for a couple of weeks, has street names straight out of Lord of the Rings. Imagine having an address like “420 Rivendell.” You’d pay a lot for it: two-bedroom houses in this little progressive utopia sell for nearly $450,000 these days.

Posted by at 04:22 AM in Nature and Place | Link |
  1. I’ve never understood why there is such a contrast in the States between town names which echo a very mixed cultural past and street names which get into a frighteningly basic description in numbers. Presumably this only happens in some towns. I wonder if any towns have resisted or renamed their numbered streets or vice versa?

    — Coup de Vent    16. October 2003, 05:15    Link
  2. There’a a history in those “mercantile” street names, too. Lakewood, a streetcar suburb of Cleveland, has a development known as “birdtown” because all the teens, ‘20s and ‘30s streets are named for birds. The East Side of Cleveland was into Anglophilia in those days. Farther out, a raft of college names implies that somebody admired the Ivy League. Then there was the fellow who named streets in Kent after his family, “Rellim,” for “Miller,” being my favorite—‘60s stuff. Now that they pluck names from focus groups, future cartographers will get a snapshot of what focus groups like—a slice of pop culture in any decade.

    Cleveland, btw, was among the first to rename a welter of downtown streets according to a numbering system. It seems soulless at first, but it has a great advantage—whereever you are, you have an idea of how far you have to go, so it’s difficult to get lost.

    — Pete zicari    16. October 2003, 11:53    Link
  3. Suburban street names are as vapid as their developments. Years ago as I was travelling in Calgary I went to find my friend’s house. I had directions through the twisty suburban streets, but I forgot the street name; all I could remember was that it started with “Oak.” I reasoned that I would easily find it.

    Soon I came across Oakside Road and thought I struck gold when I arrived at an intersection with Oakside PLace. Following that street I found Oakside Crescent and Oakfield Drive, Oakcliffe, Oakwood and Oakmoor. It was hell. I knew I was really lost when I stumbled onto Cedar Ridge. Followed by Cedarbrae, Cedarpark, Cedarbrook and so on.

    Whoever developed that street naming scheme in Calgary South, must have been smoking crack.

    — Chris Corrigan    16. October 2003, 12:07    Link
  4. There is a similar pattern to the European colonisation of both our countries – each culture leaves its own mark of ownership on the land by naming it in their own language. I wonder if these place names will exist in 100 or even 200 years time or whether they will be changed again?

    — Jenny    16. October 2003, 21:20    Link

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