What's in a name (change)?: A look at New Mexico monikers that have shifted over time

This column usually explores interesting monikers gracing buildings, roads, parks, monuments and geographic features in modern-day New Mexico, but today’s column is going to be a little different.

It will explore names that no longer exist in the state. Some were changed for practical reasons, some to give communities a sense of agency, while others had strong derogatory or outright racist connotations.

What's in a name (change)?: A look at New Mexico monikers that have shifted over time

Most recently, the U.S. Department of Interior in September 2022 voted to eliminate the derogatory term “squaw” from more than 650 federal public sites across the country, including 13 in New Mexico. The initiative was sparked by Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the first Indigenous woman to hold the post and a former U.S. representative for New Mexico. The term once simply meant “woman” but over time morphed into a disparaging way to refer to Indigenous women.

“I think it’s a powerful statement,” Corrine Sanchez, executive director of Tewa Women United, told the Santa Fe New Mexican in a Sept. 18, 2022, article. “We know that there is power in naming. It’s powerful for our young people to witness this – it’s transformative.”

The name changes in New Mexico included a reservoir in Grant County that went from Squaw Creek Ridge Tank to Ridge Tank and a creek there was changed from Squaw Creek to Meason Creek; three summits in Sandoval and Socorro counties that bore the name of Squaw Peak became Tamayameh Kah Sta Mah and Bear Peak respectively; and Squaw Mountain in Doña Ana County is now called Bar Mountain.

Shockingly, New Mexico also once had several features that included versions of a derogatory word mostly used to describe those of African descent. Robert Julyan explains in his book “The Place Names of New Mexico” that the word did not always have racist undertones and was used to describe African Americans in the American frontier during the 19th century.

The U.S. Board On Geographic Names, which operates under the umbrella of the secretary of the interior, set out in the 1960s and 1970s to eliminate racist terms from federal geographic features that were used to describe Black and Japanese citizens.

There was a creek in Colfax County named for a Black man who came to Elizabethtown during the state’s mining boom from 1865 to 1890 and lived near the creek, away from his white counterparts, according to Julyan. There was also a mesa at the Colorado border and a hill and draw in Roosevelt County.

A canyon in Otero County, according to Julyan, was named after an African American servant to Doctor Caleb Winfrey at the H-Bar Ranch near the present site of Portales. He was caught in a storm there and died sometime in the 1880s.

“Dr. Winfrey buried him on his ranch, built a fence around the grave and planted a willow to shade it,” Julyan writes. “For many years it was the only marked grave in the county.”

The hill in Roosevelt County, now called Buffalo Soldier Hill, pays tribute to a host of African American troops who set out on an expedition into the unforgiving, heat-soaked Llano Estacado to pursue Native Americans who had allegedly killed a buffalo hunter.

“They eventually came to this hill, where defeated, exhausted and wracked by thirst they abandoned their search for the Indians and began a desperate quest for water,” Julyan recounts. “Several African American soldiers died on the expedition, hence the name.”

But not all name changes happened in New Mexico because of their negative connotations. Some names were changed for practical reasons.

Albuquerque was once AlbuRquerque, but the first “r” was eventually dropped. Think that’s bad? Its original name would not have fit on one line of a standard envelope.

The city was founded in 1706 by Gov. Francisco Cuervo y Valdés, who chose the name to honor Francisco Fernández de la Cueva. He was the 10th duke of a town in Spain near the Portuguese border called Alburquerque. But he didn’t stop there. I guess he thought it needed some flair. Its original name, New Mexico State Historian Rob Martinez told the Journal in 2019, was La Villa de Alburquerque de San Francisco Xavier del Bosque.

It’s not the only town that got a name makeover. Famously, on March 31, 1950, Hot Springs changed its name to Truth or Consequences after an NBC Radio and television quiz show in hopes of winning a contest put on by host Ralph Edwards. He planned to air the show’s 10th-anniversary episode the first week of May from the first town to change its name. He visited the town every year for the next 50 years during the annual event, called Fiesta, that celebrated the name change.

The event is still being held to this day, although without Edwards, who died in 2005 at the age of 92.

What most people probably do not know though is that the town had a third name. Incorporation papers filed for the city in 1914 called it the Palomas Hot Springs Town Site. It was shortened to just Hot Springs by 1919.

Meanwhile, two New Mexico pueblos shifted away from names given to them by Spanish explorers and replaced them with Indigenous ones. In 2005, the former San Juan Pueblo in Rio Arriba County became Ohkay Owingeh, which means “place of the strong people.”

“It’s not a change,” former Ohkay Owingeh governor Herman Agoyo told the Rio Grande Sun in a May 1, 2010, story. “It’s going back to our roots. It’s who we are.”

The former Santo Domingo Pueblo followed suit four years later, quietly changing its name to Kewa Pueblo. The name was a reflection to the outside world of what it already called itself within its community.

Name changes can signify shifting cultural norms and values in a community, therefore, knowing what no longer exists can be just as insightful for providing an X-ray of a community as what remains.

Curious about how a town, street or building got its name? Email columnist Elaine Briseño at ebriseno@abqjournal.com as she continues the monthly journey in “What’s in a Name?”