L.A.’s Identity Crisis

Re “City of Angels’ First Name Still Bedevils Historians,” March 26: The article about the original name of Los Angeles is historically flawed. The Franciscan friars who moved up the territory from Baja California did not find empty lands. Rather, the missions were located at the exact spots the native California population had been inhabiting for a long time.

The pueblos were located near water and fertile fields they had been sowing and harvesting for thousands of years. The Catolicos arrived, used their guns to take over the pueblos and then Christianized these Californio pueblos they later took credit for establishing. The original name of Los Angeles is Yang-Na.

Julian Segura

Camacho

Whittier

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The article doesn’t lay out the facts set forth by Theodore Treutlein in his article, “Los Angeles: The Question of the City’s Original Spanish Name” (South- ern California Quarterly, 1973). The river and surrounding valley were named Aug. 2, 1769, by Father Crespi for the Franciscan feast day of “Our Lady of the Angels of the Porciuncula Chapel,” and thereafter the river was called “La Porciuncula” for short.

On Feb. 10, 1780, the commandant in charge, Teodoro de Croix, ordered a town to be founded on the river with the name of “The Queen of the Angels,” and he later reported in a letter of Feb. 28, 1782, that the new town was founded Sept. 4, 1781, on the bank of the river. So, the town’s original name is “La Reina de los Angeles,” and it was called “Los Angeles” for short. There is nothing wrong with calling it “Los Angeles de la Porciuncula,” just as you can call the town of Stratford where Shakespeare was born “Stratford-upon-Avon.”

Henry Ansgar Kelly

Professor of English

UCLA

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The article on the name of our city misses the point. Los Angeles is not the City of the Angels. It is the city of Our Lady, Mary, the Mother of Jesus. The title Senora de los Angeles does not refer to a preeminent female angelic sovereign, but, as historians Doyce B. Nunis Jr. and Msgr. Francis J. Weber would agree, it refers to the mother of Jesus. In Catholic and Orthodox tradition, Mary, although of human rather than angelic nature, has been elevated over the angels and is their queen. The title City of the Angels might be convenient in its brevity, but it is inaccurate.

The Rev. Gerald

A. Buckley

St. Dominic Priory

Los Angeles