What does "Vegas" in "Las Vegas" mean?
Caps
"Las Vegas" mean?
Stan Busby
>
> Maybe some Spanish readers can help. What does "Vegas" in
> "Las Vegas" mean?
I haven't a clue
John Dean
Caps <Ca...@Lock.com> wrote in message
news:9gbk8tcmkpknbnef1...@4ax.com...
> Maybe some Spanish readers can help. What does "Vegas" in
> "Las Vegas" mean?
Las Vegas = The Meadows
--
John Dean -- Oxford
I am anti-spammed -- defrag me to reply
Ross Howard
>Maybe some Spanish readers can help. What does "Vegas" in
>"Las Vegas" mean?
It means "(flood) plains". The fairly common Hispanic surname "Vega"
(as in singer-songwriter Suzanne and DJ "Little" Louie) is therefore
roughly equivalent to "Vale".
And, if you've ever wondered, "the Alamo" in Texas and "Los Alamos"
in Nevada just means "the poplar(s)".
Ross Howard
Ross Howard
<john...@fragmsn.com> wrote:
>
>Caps <Ca...@Lock.com> wrote in message
>news:9gbk8tcmkpknbnef1...@4ax.com...
>> Maybe some Spanish readers can help. What does "Vegas" in
>> "Las Vegas" mean?
>
>Las Vegas = The Meadows
A *vega* may well contain meadows, but it's more an edaphological
reference than an agricultural one. In other words, it's how it was
formed that counts, not what use it is put to. A *vega* is a silt-rich
(and therefore fertile) flood plain, consisting of a flat, wide valley
with a river running through it. If you have access to a reasonably
large-scale map of Spain -- or have ever driven into Granada from the
Costa del Sol -- that flat bit around the river Genil to the west of
Granada is the best-known vega, traditionally used to cultivate
vegetables and tobacco (now increasingly corn).
However, "The Meadow" would indeed be a decent translation for the
name of Madrid's flagship museum.
Ross Howard
khann
>
> Maybe some Spanish readers can help. What does "Vegas" in
> "Las Vegas" mean?
That depends on where you pose the question. In mainstream Spanish it
means a plain or lowland, usually fertile. Hence: Las Vegas = the
fertile plains. There are American variations such as "tobacco
plantation" (Cuba) and "swampy ground" (Chile). Perhaps a combination of
the three definitions best describes Las Vegas -- a smoking moral swamp
plainly providing fertile ground for a plantation of low life.
KHann
Stephen Toogood
de...@fragmsn.com> writes
>
>Caps <Ca...@Lock.com> wrote in message
>news:9gbk8tcmkpknbnef1...@4ax.com...
>> Maybe some Spanish readers can help. What does "Vegas" in
>> "Las Vegas" mean?
>
>Las Vegas = The Meadows
So Rudolph (if you're listening) all them slums off Carrington Street
should have been twinned with.....
(hardly bears thinking about)
--
Stephen Toogood
Martin Ambuhl
>
> Maybe some Spanish readers can help. What does "Vegas" in
> "Las Vegas" mean?
It is dangerous to answer such questions without knowledge of the
history of the placename, and I admit to being ignorant of that.
However, it would seem that the name is an example of purposeful
misleading naming. A "vega" is a fertile plain, a tobacco plantation, a
swamp, or a marsh. None seems appropriate to the place.
Spehro Pefhany
> It is dangerous to answer such questions without knowledge of the
> history of the placename, and I admit to being ignorant of that.
> However, it would seem that the name is an example of purposeful
> misleading naming. A "vega" is a fertile plain, a tobacco plantation, a
> swamp, or a marsh. None seems appropriate to the place.
According to http://www.intermind.net/im/history.html , the name was
chosen because one Rafael Rivera, a scout, discovered an oasis in the
desert, allowing travellers to pass directly through the desert rather
than skirting it. The oasis was thus named "the meadows" in Spanish.
That's the advantage with such a young town. I'll bet nobody knows the
name of the first fellow that crossed the Thames with an ox in what is now
Oxford.
Best regards.
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Evan Kirshenbaum
> And, if you've ever wondered, "the Alamo" in Texas and "Los Alamos"
> in Nevada just means "the poplar(s)".
But they sound so much better in Spanish.
One of the streets around here is the Alameda de las Pulgas. One of
the establishments on it is the Flea Street Cafe. And, of course,
"Manteca" is a perfectly lovely name for a city (even if they do
pronounce it /m&n'tik@/), but nobody in their right mind would name
their town "Lard".
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
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1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |as good as Q.E.D. in folk logic--as
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |though it were necessary to submit
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(650)857-7572 |that it was not made of green
|cheese.
| Bergen Evans
Bert
Roberta, now humming the tune over and over in Ramona, CA
--
bklimas at cts dot com
Ross Howard
<sp...@interlog.com> wrote:
>The renowned Martin Ambuhl <mam...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> It is dangerous to answer such questions without knowledge of the
>> history of the placename, and I admit to being ignorant of that.
>> However, it would seem that the name is an example of purposeful
>> misleading naming. A "vega" is a fertile plain, a tobacco plantation, a
>> swamp, or a marsh. None seems appropriate to the place.
>
>According to http://www.intermind.net/im/history.html , the name was
>chosen because one Rafael Rivera, a scout, discovered an oasis in the
>desert, allowing travellers to pass directly through the desert rather
>than skirting it. The oasis was thus named "the meadows" in Spanish.
I'd like to know where this meadow business got started, because it's
plain (pun intended) wrong. As I've said elsewhere, a meadow is, like
the Madrid museum, a *prado*.
The first settlers in Vegas (the article "las" was apparently added
later) presumably chose to call it that because the many springs in
the area made it an oasis in the middle of the Mojave desert. Oases
are fertile rather than barren. That's the key thing here and in all
*vegas* -- the fertility of the soil.
I know little (an understatement if ever there was one) of the
topography of Nevada, but if it's flat terrain between Las Vegas and
Lake Mead, the whole thing makes even more sense.
Ross Howard
Alex Chernavsky
> And, of course, "Manteca" is a perfectly lovely name for
> a city (even if they do pronounce it /m&n'tik@/), but nobody
> in their right mind would name their town "Lard".
Well, probably nobody in their right mind would name the town after the
Spanish word for "lard", either:
====Begin quote====
Manteca, "The Family City," is located in the rich agricultural region of
California known as the Central Valley. "Manteca" is the Spanish word for
lard. In the late 1860s there was an important creamery in what is now
Manteca. The name "Monteca", Spanish for cream, was therefore chosen for the
town. However, an error in the railroad printer caused the current name to
be on the map, and it has stayed that way ever since.
http://www.jsmart.org/jason/manteca/
====End quote====
--
Alex Chernavsky
al...@astrocyte-design.com
Earle D Jones
<Ca...@Lock.com> wrote:
> Maybe some Spanish readers can help. What does "Vegas" in
> "Las Vegas" mean?
*
I have always understood
Las Vegas = Lost Wages.
earle
*
R Fontana
This has some cot/caught relevance. I think most Americans who
distinguish cot from caught will use the caught vowel in "lost". Now the
interesting thing is that "Las" would seem to suggest the use of the cot
vowel, but I grew up using the caught vowel in "Las Vegas", pronouncing
the "Las" the same way I say "Los" in "Los Angeles" or the word "loss". I
believe this may not be uncommon among CINC Americans. I noticed recently
that Elvis Presley is definitely using what I consider to be a caughtlike
vowel in "Viva Las Vegas". I would assume that Elvis was a CINC speaker.
N.Mitchum
-----
> Does this mean that the rain in Spain stays mainly in Las Vegas?
>
> Roberta, now humming the tune over and over in Ramona, CA
Now tell us where the name "Ramona" came from.
----NM
Bert
famous play by Helen Hunt Jackson. Ramona is the lead character, the
ill-fated Indian maiden.
Almost every year a tour bus pulls into town full of attendees for the
annual Ramona pageant...which is not held in Ramona, but in Hemet, more
than an hour away.
Roberta in Ramona, who finally stopped humming that annoying tune just
an hour ago and now it is back...
--
bklimas at cts dot com
Michael T. Myers
"Alex Chernavsky" <al...@astrocyte-design.com wrote
>
> Manteca, "The Family City," is located in the rich agricultural region of
> California known as the Central Valley. "Manteca" is the Spanish word for
> lard. In the late 1860s there was an important creamery in what is now
> Manteca. The name "Monteca", Spanish for cream, was therefore chosen for
the
> town. However, an error in the railroad printer caused the current name to
> be on the map, and it has stayed that way ever since.
>
> http://www.jsmart.org/jason/manteca/
Hmm... that's how rumors get started. There is no Spanish word "*monteca",
certainly not one meaning "cream".
Not that this adds anything to the discussion, but in parts of South America
"manteca" means "butter", rendered elsewhere in the hispanophone world by
the diminutive "mantequilla".
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
There's a reason for that: "Las Vegas" was not named for a geographical
feature but for a saint, a common feature of Spanish and other place
names: San Francisco, Santa María, Santo Antonio, São Paulo, Ste Cécile,
St. Petersburg, St Mary's, Sint Niklaas, Sankt Moritz, etc.
"Las Vegas" is the shortened version of the original place name:
"Nuestra Señora de los Dolores de Las Vegas" (Our Lady of Sorrows of The
Meadows).
This shortening is similar to that of "Los Angeles," which started out
as "El Pueblo de la Reina de los Angeles de la Porciuncula."
--
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
Ross Howard
<al...@astrocyte-design.com> wrote:
>Evan Kirshenbaum wrote, in part:
>
>> And, of course, "Manteca" is a perfectly lovely name for
>> a city (even if they do pronounce it /m&n'tik@/), but nobody
>> in their right mind would name their town "Lard".
>
>Well, probably nobody in their right mind would name the town after the
>Spanish word for "lard", either:
>
>====Begin quote====
>
>Manteca, "The Family City," is located in the rich agricultural region of
>California known as the Central Valley. "Manteca" is the Spanish word for
>lard. In the late 1860s there was an important creamery in what is now
>Manteca. The name "Monteca", Spanish for cream
After the dodgy translation of *vega* as *meadow*, I'm now having
serious doubts about local American historians' knowledge of Spanish.
The Spanish for cream is *nata* or *crema*. *Manteca* basically means
"solid fat" -- which can be of animal origin (lard) or not (where I
live and in many other parts of the Spanish-speaking world it just
means "butter"). This alleged "monteca" smacks to me of confusion
between the verb *montar* (to beat, whip), which for obvious reasons
is often used in creamy contexts (*nata de montar* = whipping cream),
and *manteca* AKA *crema* AKA *nata*.
Try doing a Google search on "monteca" filtered for Spanish-only
pages. Only one non-US hit, where it's the proper name of some
co-operative in the Basque Country. Now do the same for "nata".
It is quite possible that *monteca* may be an old dialectical variant
of *manteca* -- in Andalusia even today many old people still call
mandarins *mondarinas* instead of the standard *mandarinas*)-- but
it's highly unlikely that with an "o" it should ever have meant
anything other than what means with an "a": solidified fat.
Ross Howard
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Martin Ambuhl wrote:
>
> > A "vega" is a fertile plain, a tobacco plantation, a swamp, or a
> > marsh. None seems appropriate to the place.
>
> There's a reason for that: "Las Vegas" was not named for a geographical
> feature but for a saint, a common feature of Spanish and other place
> names: San Francisco, Santa María, Santo Antonio, São Paulo, Ste Cécile,
> St. Petersburg, St Mary's, Sint Niklaas, Sankt Moritz, etc.
>
> "Las Vegas" is the shortened version of the original place name:
> "Nuestra Señora de los Dolores de Las Vegas" (Our Lady of Sorrows of The
> Meadows).
"de las Vegas Grandes", actually, but the point is correct.
> This shortening is similar to that of "Los Angeles," which started out
> as "El Pueblo de la Reina de los Angeles de la Porciuncula."
This one also has a "nuestra señora", and originally referred to the
river, not the town: "El Rio de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles
de la Porciúncula". The settlement was named after the river.
According to
http://www.losangelesalmanac.com/topics/History/hi03a.htm
the first official name of the town dropped both the beginning and the
end, and was simply "El Pueblo de la Reina de los Angeles".
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |The Elizabethans had so many words
1501 Page Mill Road, Building 1U |for the female genitals that it is
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |quite hard to speak a sentence of
|modern English without inadvertently
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |mentioning at least three of them.
(650)857-7572 | Terry Pratchett
Jesse James Jensen
>
> That's the advantage with such a young town. I'll bet nobody knows the
> name of the first fellow that crossed the Thames with an ox in what is now
> Oxford.
John.
P&D Schultz
> After the dodgy translation of *vega* as *meadow*, I'm now having
> serious doubts about local American historians' knowledge of Spanish.
> The Spanish for cream is *nata* or *crema*. *Manteca* basically means
> "solid fat" -- <...>
I find it interesting that neither word (vega & manteca) comes from
Latin; both are from pre-Roman Iberian locutions.
\\P. Schultz
Charles Riggs
<am...@sonic.net> wrote:
>Martin Ambuhl wrote:
>
>> Caps wrote:
>
>> > Maybe some Spanish readers can help. What does "Vegas" in
>> > "Las Vegas" mean?
>
>> It is dangerous to answer such questions without knowledge of the
>> history of the placename, and I admit to being ignorant of that.
>> However, it would seem that the name is an example of purposeful
>> misleading naming. A "vega" is a fertile plain, a tobacco plantation,
>> a swamp, or a marsh. None seems appropriate to the place.
>
>There's a reason for that: "Las Vegas" was not named for a geographical
>feature but for a saint, a common feature of Spanish and other place
>names: San Francisco, Santa María, Santo Antonio, São Paulo, Ste Cécile,
>St. Petersburg, St Mary's, Sint Niklaas, Sankt Moritz, etc.
>
>"Las Vegas" is the shortened version of the original place name:
>"Nuestra Señora de los Dolores de Las Vegas" (Our Lady of Sorrows of The
>Meadows).
Now that makes sense. I was trying yesterday to envision how anyone,
when naming the town, would associate a fertile plain with the horrid
patch of land Las Vegas squats upon.
Charles Riggs
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
> > > A "vega" is a fertile plain, a tobacco plantation, a swamp, or a
> > > marsh. None seems appropriate to the place.
> > There's a reason for that: "Las Vegas" was not named for a geographical
> > feature but for a saint, a common feature of Spanish and other place
> > names: San Francisco, Santa María, Santo Antonio, São Paulo, Ste Cécile,
> > St. Petersburg, St Mary's, Sint Niklaas, Sankt Moritz, etc.
> >
> > "Las Vegas" is the shortened version of the original place name:
> > "Nuestra Señora de los Dolores de Las Vegas" (Our Lady of Sorrows
> > of The Meadows).
> "de las Vegas Grandes", actually, but the point is correct.
> > This shortening is similar to that of "Los Angeles," which started out
> > as "El Pueblo de la Reina de los Angeles de la Porciuncula."
> This one also has a "nuestra señora", and originally referred to the
> river, not the town: "El Rio de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles
> de la Porciúncula". The settlement was named after the river.
> According to
>
> http://www.losangelesalmanac.com/topics/History/hi03a.htm
>
> the first official name of the town dropped both the beginning and the
> end, and was simply "El Pueblo de la Reina de los Angeles".
Thanks for the corrections and additional information, Evan. Los
Angeles had a variety of names, and I vaguely remembered the "Nuestra
Señora" part but not well enough to quote it.
I got the info above from Kelsie Harder's dictionary of American and
Canadian place names and am a bit disappointed that he's wrong
(incomplete) about both names. Dr. Harder is a personal friend of mine,
a fellow member of the American Name Society, and a meticulous Professor
of English (SUNY).
Perhaps some of the flaws in his dictionary are the result of a slovenly
typesetter and proofreader (missing accent, capitalization) or of an
over-eager editor snipping away text to keep the book at the publisher's
limit of 632 pages.
--
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
daniel mcgrath
wrote:
>This has some cot/caught relevance. I think most Americans who
>distinguish cot from caught will use the caught vowel in "lost". Now the
>interesting thing is that "Las" would seem to suggest the use of the cot
>vowel, but I grew up using the caught vowel in "Las Vegas", pronouncing
>the "Las" the same way I say "Los" in "Los Angeles" or the word "loss". I
>believe this may not be uncommon among CINC Americans. I noticed recently
>that Elvis Presley is definitely using what I consider to be a caughtlike
>vowel in "Viva Las Vegas". I would assume that Elvis was a CINC speaker.
I am a CINC speaker (I'm from Long Island) and I would use the "cot"
vowel in pronouncing "Las Vegas". And I have *never* heard this "Las"
pronounced with the "caught" vowel.
--------------------------------------------------
daniel g. mcgrath
a subscriber to _word ways: the journal of recreational linguistics_
http://www.wordways.com/