Albuquerque & Other Appellations

While our American English is an interesting amalgamation of a multitude of other languages, so are the names of our uniquely American places. From towns and cities to rivers and states, myriad provenances have combined to create our language, and our nation.

Some names are a given: we have many towns, cities, counties, states and capitals named for famous people, including past Presidents. Lincoln is perhaps the most prolific of namesakes, with almost all states having at least a Lincoln County or a town named for him. Utah has a lake named for the 16th President. Alaska honored his name with an island. Vermont has a Lincoln Peak, named after a Revolutionary War general, in the Green Mountain Range. (After Lincoln’s assassination, they named neighboring mountains Abraham Peak and Nancy Hanks Peak.) Lincoln, Nebraska is one of four U.S. state capitals named for a President. The other three are Madison, Wisconsin; Jackson, Mississippi, and Jefferson City, Missouri.

When studying the origin of the name Mississippi, we learn it is derived from the Choctaw word for “Great River” or “Father of Rivers” – which the Mississippi River certainly is. Some of our rivers follow this pattern: Ohio, for example, is Shawnee for “Beautiful River”. The Delaware River, which divides Pennsylvania from New Jersey, is named for the once thriving tribe who dwelled in that area. (The first state gets its moniker from that same tribe.) The Columbia River is named for – like many places in our area of the world – Christopher Columbus.

Washington, D.C. is named for our first President, George Washington, and Christopher Columbus (the District of Columbia). Before the Civil War, America was often called Columbia, as The United States of America was a bit of an effort to say. In the 19th century, no one casually called our country “the states” or "USA".

America, additionally, has an eclectic mix of places named for ancient places (like Philadelphia), Great Britain for both cities (York, PA, Lancaster, PA, Plymouth, MA, Cambridge, MA), and states (many of our states, which used to be English colonies, are named for British monarchs: Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas for example. Pennsylvania is named for William Penn’s father, an English admiral). Many names come from Germany (Hanover, Pennsylvania and East Berlin come to mind), France (Des Moines, Baton Rouge and Boise are a few), the native populace (Albany, New York and Ketchikan, Alaska are two of them), and the names of settlers of the towns or prominent people of that area (like Houston, Texas and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania).

One of the stranger names for a prominent American city is Albuquerque, New Mexico. It’s not like most of the other names one might see in our nation. You might be surprised to know that it is Arabic. Translated, it means “the white oak”.

Since the colonies and later, the Wild West, were not settled by Arabs, it is curious that Albuquerque was the name given to a prominent settlement in what later became our 47th state. However, a little historical research solves the mystery.

For nearly eight centuries, the Ottoman Empire was firmly established in the Iberian Peninsula. Sultans ruled in both Portugal and Spain. Until 1492, when King Ferdinand and his wife, Queen Isabella, conquered the Arab rulers and pushed them across the Straits of Gibraltar, Spain wasn’t yet a nation. When Ferdinand and Isabella married, they combined their kingdoms and Spain was born.

The sultans had already established towns and cities, and had built great palaces and strongholds. The new Spanish monarchs kept the palaces and the cities – and many remained with their original names.

 An example is the New Mexico city of Albuquerque. There were towns in both Spain and Portugal with this name.

In addition, as some of the Arabs, during their reign, married into the Spanish culture, they had descendants with Arabic surnames. One of them was the Duke of Alburquerque (yes, that’s the correct spelling with the extra "r"), a Portuguese military leader who was given the title from the king in the mid-fifteenth century.  

A few decades later, Columbus made his famous voyage. His discovery of the New World led to widespread travels to both North and South America, many of them by Spanish conquistadores. As a result, numerous cities and states in Florida and the southwest are named in Spanish: the states of Florida (flowery), California (hot furnace), Nevada (snowy), Montana (mountain), Colorado (red, as in ruddy), and Arizona (Basque for oak tree); and Los Angeles, Santa Fe, San Francisco, San Antonio, Sacramento, Las Vegas and even Albuquerque are some of the more famous Spanish eponyms. Because many of the conquistadores came from southwestern Spain, near the border with Portugal, they were familiar with the name Albuquerque – though they dropped an “r” from the name of the Iberian peerage.

The first Spanish explorer to reach what is now New Mexico was Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. Though he attempted to settle the area, the native populace fought hard to keep the Spaniards away – and for a time they succeeded. It was finally Don Diego de Vargas who came to stay in 1692, giving the town its unusual Arabic name. For him, however, it was not unusual – he named it after a town in Spain.

Incidentally, because of the longstanding Arabic influence in Spain, a few of our English words also have some Arabic provenance – but only those that translate almost identically into Spanish. A few of them include: algebra, alcohol, alias, alacrity, album, alignment, and allergy.

 The word “al” means “the” in Arabic.

Who would have thought of it? Strange but true.

Pass the word!