The Albuquerque Tribune columnist Stacy Sacco is lost in translation:
Starting from the south, we might enter the state through the Passage city in Texas (El Paso) that parallels the Big River (Rio Grande) and travel north to the City of Crosses (Las Cruces). Other towns to visit in New Mexico might include Cold Water (Agua Fria), Soul (Alma), Birth Place (Belen), Horse (Caballo), Hill (Cerro), Sweet (Dulce), Poplar Forest (Los Alamos), The Moons (Los Lunas), Large Rock (Peñasco), Little Towns (Placitas), Porches (Portales), River Ranch (Rio Rancho), Noisy Place (Ruidoso, so named for the loud river that runs through it), Holy Faith (Santa Fe), Saint Rose (Santa Rosa), Dry Ditch (Arroyo Seco), Cry For Help (Socorro) or Solitude (Soledad).
One of our most unusual city names is Rat City (Raton) named for the large number of mice and rats found in the nearby mountains feasting on piñon nuts (as noted in Donald A. Gill’s book “Stories Behind the Street Names of Albuquerque, Santa Fe & Taos”).
If our Spanish-speaking visitors wanted to do something recreational, they might try sailing at Shell Lake (Conchas), hiking along The Light Trail (La Luz) or fishing in the Dirty River (Rio Puerco). They may also want to do some afternoon shopping at Crowned Center (Coronado), followed by dinner at The Twins Restaurant (Los Cuates) before taking in a performance at the Mud Brick Theater (Adobe).
As they drive around the Albuquerque area, our Spanish-speaking friends might discover some of our unusually named schools. Examples include Bear Ditch Elementary (Arroyo Del Oso), Little Bird Elementary (Pajarito), Mountain View Elementary (Monte Vista), Placed by the Sun Elementary (Puesta Del Sol), Mountain Shadow Elementary (Sombra Del Monte), Valley View Elementary (Valle Vista), The Cave High School (La Cueva), North High School (Del Norte) or West Table High School (West Mesa).
When I first visited Atlanta, I wondered if Georgians were “peach-crazy” since they used the word “peach” to name so many streets and landmarks such as Peach Street Plaza. Our Spanish-speaking visitors might wonder if we are “watermelon-crazy” since more than 100 companies in the area include the word “sandia,” which translates to “watermelon.”
For example, there’s Watermelon National Laboratories, the Watermelon Peak Tram and Ski Area, Lovelace Watermelon Health Systems, Watermelon Casino, Watermelon Science & Technology Park, Watermelon Hearing Aids, and one of my favorites, the city Watermelon Pool just north of Watermelon High School. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think watermelons float.
NewMexiKen admires the nearby Watermelon Presbyterian Church and Watermelon Memory Gardens.
This reminds me of a story. In 1989 I was traveling from Nairobi, Kenya to Arusha, Tanzania in a matatu, a public van. I was sitting in the back seat with another American guy I had just met on that ride. He was a pilot who years earlier he had started a group called Flying Doctors. He had lived in the area for many years and entertained me for hours with some fantastic stories.
We passed through a small town an hour or so north of Arusha. There was a very large hill along one edge of the town that had a steep ravine running straight down the middle. It cleaved the hill into a couple of well-defined hemispheres which bore a striking resemblance to a large part of the human anatomy, one which all except perhaps cartoon character Hank Hill, share.
My traveling companion explained how the Tanzanian government had built a school for the locals which were nearly all part of some small indigenous tribe whose name I cannot recall. Someone in the government, without consulting locals concerning the matter, had decided to have the school officially named after the hill.
Thus it happened that in the language of the town folks the school was named ?The Asshole School.?
Chicago = “place of wild onions”
Manhattan = “It’s nice to be on the island”
Possibly wrong is the widely held idea that “Sandia” is a direct translation of spanish “watermelon.” Erna Fergusson noted in her 1947 book, “Albuquerque” that the original names of the mountain were “Santo Dia” or “La Sierra de la Santilla” either of which could have morphed into “Sandia”.
Coco
NewMexiKen is somewhat reluctant to dispute an expert like Erna Fergusson, but the fact that the mountain range south of the Watermelons is named Apples and the range north of the Watermelons is named Blood of Christ leads me to believe the color red has something to do with it.
Sr. Sacco seems mostly right on a lot of things, but exactly right on far fewer. For instance, Los Alamos also means the cottonwoods; Belen refers to Bethlehem; Socorro was named for the succor it gave a Spanish explorer; and Rio Rancho, a city named by anglo developers, means ranch river…not river ranch. Also, Los Lunas was named after the Luna family: hence to masc. article with the fem. noun. It is one of the great things about New Mexico that sooner or later most people try to figure out how things actually got named. There are a couple of books on it and I still refer to them all the time.
I guess what meaning is “right” is a matter of perspective. Mr. Sacco is correct in stating that Belen means birthplace or nativity scene. Although the word is often used as a reference to Bethlehem, the technical meaning is “nacimiento” which is birth place. The word cottonwood is technically translated as “?lamo de virginia” not ?lamo. The translation for the word poplar is ” ?lamo”, theefore “The Poplars is a more likely translation for Los Alamos. The technical meaning of the word socorro is cry for help although most people think of it as succor.
The perspective aspect of this is that the early settlers may have used the word for a name in its true technical meaning or used it idiosyncratically.