SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Do you know how to spell the name of the largest city in New Mexico? Even if you don’t, you certainly have company.
In fact, officials from Albuquerque, N.M., let a road sign with a misspelled version of the city’s name road go up along Route 66. A motorist snapped a pic of the erroneous sign – which read “Albuqueque,” instead – and posted it on Twitter.
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“How long you think before they replace it? Or should we just go with it?” the poster said Monday.
This isn’t the first time that an “r” has been dropped from the city name. According to the Albuquerque Journal, the municipality was named in honor of Francisco Fernández de la Cueva, the 10th Duke of Alburquerque, a town near the Spain/Portugal border.
At that time, the town’s name actually had much more to it than the since-deleted letter. The original name was La Villa de Alburquerque de San Francisco Xavier del Bosque, New Mexico State Historian Rob Martinez told the Journal. He explained that the town’s current name means “white oak” and that it is thought to have either Spanish or Arabic origins.
By time the town blossomed into the metropolis it is today with more than 560,000 residents, the first “r” in the name had disappeared.
“It’s not clear how or why the first ‘r’ was dropped, although there are stories,” said the Albuquerque Journal. “Some claim the letter was dropped to make it easier to pronounce, while others say it was a mistake that stuck.”
According to the Los Angeles Times, some other towns bearing the name have also decided to go with the single “r” version. The outlet even said that an attempt to put the old two “r” spelling on trolleys in the New Mexico city was met with criticism.
It doesn’t appear that the deletion of the name’s second “r” is going to stick, at least any time soon. KOB 4 said a spokesperson for the New Mexico Department of Transportation confirmed Thursday that they had already fixed the sign after receiving “a lot of calls” about it. Fortunately, there was no cost to alter it, according to the outlet.
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