Bad grammar and more quirks of city names
Cecilia Rasmussen
'La Puente' resulted from someone's misunderstanding of the rules of Spanish. Most other town monikers are less puzzling.
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Los Angeles Times
Some city monikers simply embrace the town’s history and identity. One name is ungrammatical. And the City of Angels’ original name still bedevils some historians.

Los Angeles County has 88 cities, each with its own story. Here’s how some of them got their names, along with the year they incorporated.

La Puente (1956)

This name came from the handiwork of 18th century explorers with the Gaspar de Portola expedition. They built a bridge, or puente, to help their livestock cross the muddy arroyo.

The bridge, long since gone, became the city’s motif -- and its grammatically incorrect namesake. “Bridge” is a masculine noun in Spanish and takes the masculine article “el”; feminine nouns get “la.” So the name should be El Puente.

La Verne (1906)

Real estate investor Isaac W. Lord laid out Lordsburg in 1887 and built a grand hotel -- the only building in town. He intended to create a community to rival Pomona and offered free train rides to promote it, to no avail: The town went bust.

In 1891, members of the Church of the Brethren turned the hotel into Lordsburg College, attracting fellow members from across the country.

Lordsburg incorporated in 1906. The name soon brought ribbing from neighbors, who believed townsfolk thought they were a “favored group of God.”

In 1917, after Lord died, residents voted to take the name of a nearby ranch, La Verne. Ranch owner Margaret Bixby, who spoke a little French -- but not as well as she thought -- chose the moniker because the land was filled with trees. Although verne means “alder” in French, Bixby apparently believed it meant “green or spring-like.”

Lordsburg College is now the University of La Verne. The original hotel was razed in the late 1920s.

Lancaster (1977)

Founded in 1876, the community was little more than a whistle stop on the Southern Pacific Railroad. It’s believed to have been named by railroad officials, presumably for Lancaster, Pa., or Lancaster, England. Or perhaps a railroad official was named Lancaster.

In 1884, real estate developer Moses Langley Wicks of Aberdeen, Miss., laid out the town site.

Lawndale (1959)

Hoping to make Easterners feel at home, founder Charles B. Hopper in 1905 named the town site after a Chicago suburb. Hopper, who hailed from Titusville, Pa., advertised it as “The Town That Was Started Right.” Lots sold for $75, with $1 down, The Times reported.

Lomita (1964)

There is little dispute that the town derives its name from the Spanish for “little hill,” but there is disagreement over who bestowed the name. One source claims that a surveyor’s map of Rancho San Pedro mentions Lomita del Toro, meaning “Little Bull Hill,” just a few miles east of today’s city. Other sources say it was named by early promoters.

In 1907, developer William I. Hollingsworth opened the first housing tract. But Lomita’s pioneer settler is considered to be M.M. Eshelman, who that same year purchased nearly eight acres for $2,337. Eshelman Avenue is still one of the main thoroughfares of the city, which later touted itself as the “celery capital of the world.”

Long Beach (1897)

In 1882, the community was known as Willmore City, after English developer William Erwin Willmore. He hoped to create a resort for winter-weary Midwesterners, but when too few buyers appeared, his plans collapsed.

In 1888, Long Beach Land & Water Co. took over and gave the community its current name, chosen because of the size and shape of the beach.

But for a while, at least, Long Beach became exactly what Willmore intended: a sanctuary for warmth-seeking Midwesterners. So many moved to the community that an Iowa picnic was held each summer.

Los Angeles (1850)

Somewhere along the way, the river and the town’s original name became muddled in history.

On Aug. 2, 1769, diarist Father Juan Crespi named the Los Angeles River and surrounding valley El Rio Valle de la Nuestra Senora de los Angeles de Porciuncula, for the Franciscan feast day of Our Lady of the Angels of the Porciuncula Chapel in Italy, where St. Francis of Assisi founded the Franciscan order.

On Sept. 4, 1781, when a town was founded on the banks of the river, it was named El Pueblo de la Reyna de Los Angeles, meaning “the town of the Queen of the Angels.” It was known as Los Angeles for short.

Others assert that the city’s correct original name is El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora de los Angeles de Porciuncula, or “the town of Our Lady of the Angels of Porciuncula.”

Lynwood (1921)

The municipality traces its roots to the 1880s, when pioneer dairyman Charles H. Sessions decided to name his business the Lynwood Dairy and Creamery in honor of his wife, Lynn Wood Sessions.

Malibu (1991)

For thousands of years, the Chumash Indian village Humaliwu, meaning “place where the surf sounds loudly,” existed where Malibu Lagoon meets the sea. The coastal enclave’s name is derived from this Chumash word.

Manhattan Beach (1912)

Developer George Peck called a section he subdivided at the north end of town “Shore Acres,” after a Santa Fe Railway sign.

In 1901, developer Stewart Merrill bought the southern portion and called his section Manhattan, after his hometown and New York’s famous island.

Unable to agree on a joint name, they flipped a coin and Merrill won. In 1902, the railroad changed the junction name to Manhattan, and Times real estate ads referred to the community as Manhattan Beach.

Maywood (1924)

This community was once part of the vast land empire of Arcadia Bandini Stearns de Baker, descendant of Don Antonio Maria Lugo, who was mayor of Los Angeles between 1815 and 1820. She married two of the richest American settlers -- prosperous rancher Able Stearns and Col. Robert S. Baker, an early landowner who is considered, with Nevada Sen. John P. Jones, a co-founder of Santa Monica.

But the town’s name is derived from another woman, May Wood, a popular employee of Laguna Land & Water Co., which began subdividing the property in 1919.

Monrovia (1887)

The community began as a health resort, a sanatorium in the hills catering to Easterners with tuberculosis. It was named for a Civil War veteran and railroad builder, William Newton Monroe, who purchased 240 acres of what had been Rancho Santa Anita for $30,000 in the 1880s.

Monroe built his home, which he called the Oaks, and laid out streets named for fruits, flowers and his eldest daughter, Myrtle.

Monroe always told his friends traveling between San Bernardino and Los Angeles how to reach the ranch via a certain road. His wife suggested that “via” -- “road” in Spanish -- be attached to Monroe, hence, Monrovia, he said in 1930, The Times reported.

cecilia.rasmussen@latimes.com

Sources: “1000 California Place Names” by Erwin G. Gudde; “The Dictionary of California Land Names” by Phil Townsend Hanna; “Some Images of Lawndale’s Past,” by Jim Osborne; “The Founding Documents of Los Angeles, A Bilingual Edition,” by Doyce B. Nunis Jr.; “Los Angeles A to Z” by Leonard Pitt and Dale Pitt; Chambers of Commerce and city websites; Los Angeles Times archives