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This time we asked what is the full name of LA? Well, Los Angeles obviously, but let’s go fuller than that. To quote from my reference source:
“…founded by the Spanish in 1781 as El Pueblo de la Reina de los Angeles ‘The Town of the Queen of the Angels’, that is the Virgin Mary. A fuller version is El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reina de los Angeles del Rio de Porciúncula ‘The Town of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels of the River Porziuncola’. The angels in the title refer to a fresco of the Virgin Mary surrounded by angels in a little chapel given to St Francis (1181–1226) of Assisi by the Benedictines. It was called the Porziuncola ‘Little Portion (of Land)’, which now stands within a large basilica, St Mary of the Angels, so called because one day angelic voices were heard singing in the surrounding woods. The link with Los Angeles stems from a date: 2 August. This was the day that the feast of the Perdono, the Porziuncola Indulgence, was celebrated in the Porziuncola in Assisi. It was also the day in 1769 when a Spanish expedition, searching for mission sites, camped by a river in California. One of the expedition’s members, Father Juan Crespi, was a Franciscan priest who named the river Nuestra Señora de los Angeles de la Porciuncola ‘Our Lady of the Angels of Porciuncola’. When the settlement was founded it was given a name very similar to that of the river which is now called the Los Angeles River. For a time the settlement was simply called El Pueblo. In due course, the last two words of the full title, from the Spanish angel ‘angel’, were preferred for the shortened version…”
The question, and answer, were found in the “Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names” which can be found within the Oxford Reference Online. This database provides quick reference and scholarly articles from a broad range of subjects in over 100 titles that include key titles from the Oxford Companion series and the complete Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Find it on the library’s Research & Homework page and access it with your library card. You’ll find it under O.
