Oxnard

Several times this past weekend I drove through a city with one of most unpleasant sounding names in the English language—Oxnard. It sounds like the home town of Gollum and the Orks. Of course, living in Lubbock, a town with a name like a frog's mating call, maybe I shouldn't talk. The people who named these towns must have had other things on their minds than melodious sounds.

On the other hand, I spent Saturday night in Port Hueneme. When I asked the desk clerk how to pronounce the town's name, she said "Why-NEE-mee" and went on to tell me the story behind the name. Princess Hueneme of the Chumash who inhabited this part of the coast, was in love. But a witch who lived on Sulfur Mountain, near present-day Santa Clara, put a curse on her beloved so that he could not see her beauty. What is it with these witches? They need to get a life! Spurned, Hueneme climbed to the top of Mugu Rock and threw herself into the sea. Her death broke the spell, and when her admired saw her body floating in the sea, he recognized her beauty and his loss and cast himself off Mugu to join her in death.

Thankfully, the Latin culture of California resulted in a beautiful symphony of names—Laguna, Los Olivos, Paso Robles, and a whole pantheon of saints—San Luis Obispo, Santa Ana, San Clemente, Santa Clarita. Lord only knows what names these communities would carry had it been left up to English speakers. We'd be stuck with tags like one of my favorites in Texas—Stink Creek Road. Wouldn't you like that address on all your mail? If the Anglo Saxons had carried the day at Grand Canyon, we'd all be visiting Big Ditch.

My home-away-from-home is a case in point. The first settlers and would-be developers in this area gave it the sorry name Mound City. What were they thinking? Who wants to move to Mound City? Mound of what? With PR skills of that level, they deserved to fail, and they did. Fortunately, the Adventists rechristened the area Loma Linda. Good choice. Much better than the English translation Pretty Hill. Loma Linda. The alliteration of the liquid ells and the consonance of the nasal "m" and "n" plus the assonance at the words' ends and the trochaic meter—all these blend together to form a place name that sounds like healing.

Most of us get no opportunity to name anything except our kids—and don't even get me started on the names that show up on my class lists! If we do have the chance to bestow names, let's roll those words around on our tongues like we're tasting fine wines. If we have to spit 'em out in disgust, better that than punishing the ears of posterity.

Treatment count: 38 down, 7 to go.