Origin of the Name "Albuquerque" (Alamogordo, Alamo: malls, plantations)

[Tim Rankin]

I was reading up on the origin of our city's name and came across something I hadn't heard before.

The conventional wisdom is that we're the "Duke City", taking our name from the Duke, or Viceroy, of Albuquerque.

It turns out that the family our Duke came from, the Albuquerque line, took their name from what was a small region of Iberia. That region's name comes from the Moorish "Abu al-Qurq", which means Land of the Cork Oak.

It is true there are many large cork oak plantations in parts of Spain and Portugal.

So Albuquerque = Land of the Cork Oak????

http://www.math.unm.edu/~wester/ABQ

[Zoidberg]

Good research. Only thing I'd add is it is the Alburquerque line, as the first R got dropped at some point.

[Tim Rankin]

Originally Posted by Zoidberg

Good research. Only thing I'd add is it is the Alburquerque line, as the first R got dropped at some point.

Good thing they dropped it - folks have enough trouble spelling the name as is!

[ABQConvict]

Wow, never heard that one before.

I'd always thought it came from Alba Quercus. "White Oak" in Latin.
This is disputed in the article at the following link: JSTOR: Accessing JSTOR (broken link) which puts forth the suggestion that it is from an Arabic rendering (Al barquk) of the Greek word for apricot. Fascinating little article, really.

ABQConvict

P.S. The link in the original post doesn't seem to work.

[GregW]

I had heard that Albuquerque is Spanish for cottonwood.

[Zoidberg]

Spanish for cottonwood is "Alamo".

Alamogordo, "fat cottonwood".

Other bit of useless trivia, there are at least two other Cottonwood malls in Salt Lake City Utah metro.