What’s in a name?

religious figures.

As the American influence took over, railroad officials looking to put a familiar stamp on new communities gave a number of towns their names. Des Moines, Cloudcroft and Vaughn were all, in some fashion, inspired by those who were working on the railroad in the 19th century.

Many sites were named or renamed after the local postmaster, or his or her beloved ones: Cleveland, Grady and Eunice all owe a debt to the U.S. Postal Service and the weight it threw behind approving new place names. An amusing story about Eunice, related in Julyan’s book, has it that the southeastern New Mexico oil town was the name of the oldest daughter of postmaster J.N. Carson. The Postal Service OK’d the name even though it “was last on a list of names submitted,” Julyan writes.

Still others — Ramon comes to mind — have names that are challenging to research. Julyan’s book says Ramon, the Spanish form of the name Raymond, was “chosen by postal authorities from a list submitted for a post office, the submission is unexplained.”

Julyan says small, rural New Mexico communities often did not feel they had an identity until they had established a post office, which in turn brought them a formal name.

But names can be changed, as residents of the territory and state found out over the centuries. When the Spanish arrived in the region in the 1600s, they changed the names of many — but not all — Native American communities, including the pueblos. They also “hispanicized” some names, changing the way they were pronounced, like Tesuque and Taos, Martinez says.

“Changing the name of a community is a statement of conquest,” Martinez says. “It says that there is a new conqueror in town.”

This routine repeated itself when the United States took over the New Mexico territory from Mexico in the 1840s.

The village of Cleveland, near Mora, originally was named San Antonio, Martinez says. In the 1890s, the name was changed to honor President Grover Cleveland. Local Hispanics who preferred the original name probably displayed their displeasure and refusal to acquiesce by still calling it San Antonio, Martinez says.

“I’m not saying every time there was a name change it was a conscious effort to turn the territory into an Anglo American state,” Martinez says. “Sometimes it was just because it was easier to pronounce the new name for people who spoke English.”

But, he adds, “there’s something to be said that it also showed that Anglos were essentially running things.”

Sometimes current events dictated a name change. Take the case of Swastika, located south of Raton. It was a coal mining town that served as a sister community to nearby Brilliant, founded in the early 1900s. As Julyan explains, swastika meant “good fortune” and that seemed to be an appropriate name for the site at the time.

But when World War II broke out, with anti-German sentiment riding high and the swastika being used as a symbol by the Nazis, the town changed its name to Brilliant II. Regardless, both Brilliant and Brilliant II were pretty much abandoned by the early 1950s.

Another name change occurred in the early 1950s when residents of Hot Springs agreed to change the name to Truth or Consequences, after a then-popular television show. That show’s host, Ralph Edwards, said he would broadcast one of his anniversary shows from any town that would change its name to that of his show. The Hot Springs folks jumped at the idea.

Not only did the name change bring about national media attention, but the town would “no longer be confused with the

NAME DROPPING

Here are some facts about some place names of New Mexico, taken from Robert Julyan’s book The Place Names of New Mexico (University of New Mexico Press). ALCATRAZ was a small town less than a mile south of Turley in San Juan County that Hispanic settlers founded in the 1870s. Julyan writes the origin of the name remains a mystery but says one local theory is “it was inspired by the location’s isolation and difficulty of access, like that of the well known former federal prison in California.” BELEN is the Spanish word for Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. The name dates back to 1740 as a land grant called Nuestra Señora de Belén. (One of the city’s neighborhoods became known as Jerusalem.) Julyan says originally the land grant consisted of 8 separate plazas which eventually assimilated into one.

GALLUP was named after auditor and railroad paymaster David L. Gallup after railroad workers would say they were “going to Gallup’s” to collect their dough. Julyan says the Navajos called the town by a name meaning “spanned across,” referring to an old footbridge over the Rio Puerto adjacent to the railroad depot.

JAL was named for a brand on a herd of cattle brought into the area in the 1880s from Texas by

numerous other towns named Hot Springs,” Julyan wrote. The town’s name changed, but its high school didn’t go along. People in Sierra County still root for the Hot Springs Tigers.

Julyan laughs as he recalls the story of a 1980s effort on the part of some Raton citizens to change that town’s name back to its original title, Willow Springs, because the Spanish translation for “raton” is rodent. That attempt failed.

“If you ever want to kick up a scu±e, propose changing a name,” Julyan says.

Martinez, who grew up in Albuquerque, notes his family is from the Mora Valley near Cleveland. But he says with a laugh he doesn’t think he would “go marching through Mora with a big banner reading: ‘Change Cleveland back to San Antonio.’ “

But changes happen, and often because history is deep and wide.

Fifteen years ago, San Juan four brothers, the Cowdens, who established a ranch there. Since the first post office was on the Cowden ranch, the town became known as Jal.

NUTT started as a railroad terminal and was named after Col. Henry Clay Nutt, one of the railroad’s directors. When the railroad was extended to Lake Valley, the town lost much of its luster, but Julyan says the city has maintained a sense of humor, setting up a sign saying it is in “The Middle of Nowhere.”

SOCORRO owes its name to the Spanish conquistador Don Juan de Oñate, who gave the name — meaning “aid, help” — to the Piro pueblo of Teypana, which was in the vicinity. The pueblo people gave the Spanish corn to help them — hence the name.

ZUZAX You may have seen this name at exit 178 on Interstate 40. It’s the last place name in Julyan’s book and he says the roadside retail entrepreneur Herman Ardans came up with it because it would be the last entry in the phone book and thus easy to find. Ardans opened a curio shop there in the mid-1950s. It’s gone now, but some online sources say there is a gas station there, and if you google a bit, you’ll find a few road travelers posting blogs talking about stopping there to find out what it’s all about.

Pueblo switched back to its original name, Ohkay Owingeh, which predated the Spanish takeover of the area centuries ago. At the time, tribal Gov. Herman Agoyo said San Juan was a name “given to us to which we had no choice.”

Ohkay Owingeh means “place of the strong people.’’

Both Julyan and Martinez say place names are enduring and invariably outlast the people who came up with them. Julyan says people driving on any road in New Mexico may stop to ponder why a community bears the name it does — including Ramon.

“Even in places where there is nothing there anymore, people do associate with the name,” he says. “They have an emotional attachment even if the name doesn’t have a particular appealing meaning.

“It’s an important part of the historical record. The name reminds them, it speaks to the continuity of these populations.”