New Orleans, Louisiana: The City Named for France's Regent
New Orleans had a storekeeper before it had a store: in October 1717, France appointed one for a post that was still to be built at a place called New Orleans. The name honored the Duke of Orléans, who was ruling France at the time as regent.
A name on paper in Paris
The paperwork came first. The French historian Marc de Villiers dug through the colonial archives for his 1917 history of the city’s founding, and he found that on October 1, 1717, the Council of the Navy named a man called Bonnaud storekeeper and cashier “au comptoir qui doit être établi à la Nouvelle-Orléans,” at the trading post that is to be set up at New Orleans. A register that seems to have belonged to one of the directors of the company that ran Louisiana then copies a Company of the West resolution to build a town thirty leagues up the river “que l’on nommerait la Nouvelle-Orléans,” that would be called New Orleans.
On the ground, there wasn’t much yet. A French account that Pierre Margry published from the colonial records says that in February 1718, Bienville, the colony’s commander, went looking for a good spot on the Mississippi for the company’s main post, and picked the place “that has since been given the name of New Orleans.” Villiers adds that the first colonists who sailed for the new town in early 1718 probably didn’t know very well where it was going to be. In Paris, people still couldn’t agree on the site.
Why the Regent
Villiers is clear about who the name was for. The book’s list of illustrations calls Philippe II d’Orléans the “parrain,” the godfather, of New Orleans, and Villiers argues that a town named for His Royal Highness the Regent was bound to impress would-be colonists. He guessed that names like Biloxi or Natchitoches must have sounded a little wild to people in Paris. Grace King’s 1895 history and Alcée Fortier’s 1914 Louisiana encyclopedia agree on the honoree: “the Regent, Duke of Orleans,” in both.
Henry Gannett’s 1905 list of U.S. place names for the U.S. Geological Survey puts it more briefly: “named from the city in France.” It doesn’t say where that came from. The histories that went back to the founding papers all point to the duke.
Who actually picked it
That part’s fuzzier than you’d think. Fortier says Bienville had the town staked out and “gave the name of New Orleans in honor of the Regent.” Villiers couldn’t find the document that settles it. His best guess is that Bienville and the governor, L’Epinay, suggested the name in a May 1717 report on new posts, and that the company’s directors then approved it. Villiers couldn’t find that report, so it’s an educated guess, not a fact.
A complaint about grammar
Not everyone liked the new name. Villiers quotes Father Charlevoix, a French priest who wrote a history of New France, and who grumbled that whoever named the town must have thought Orléans was a feminine noun in French. In his view, that’s why it’s “la Nouvelle-Orléans” and not “le Nouvel-Orléans.” Then Charlevoix shrugged it off: usage had settled it, and usage is “au-dessus des règles de grammaire,” above the rules of grammar. So the next time you hear someone fuss that a city’s name is grammatically wrong, you can tell them Charlevoix was already doing it about New Orleans, and even he gave up.
Sources & further reading
- Marc de Villiers, Histoire de la fondation de la Nouvelle-Orléans (1717–1722) (1917). In French. Bonnaud’s appointment on October 1, 1717; the Company of the West’s resolution to build a town “que l’on nommerait la Nouvelle-Orléans”; the colonists who didn’t know where the town would be; Villiers’ guess that Bienville and L’Epinay proposed the name; the Regent as “parrain”; Charlevoix’s complaint about grammar (pp. 17–22).
- Alcée Fortier, ed., Louisiana, vol. 2 (1914). Bienville picked the site in 1718 and named the town “in honor of the Regent, Duke of Orleans” (pp. 216–217).
- Grace King, New Orleans: The Place and the People (1895). The town was “named after the Regent, Duke of Orleans” (p. 34).
- Pierre Margry, ed., Mémoires et documents, vol. 5 (1887). In French. The February 1718 entry from the Journal historique on Bienville choosing the site “auquel on a donné depuis le nom de la Nouvelle-Orléans” (p. 549).
- Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905). “Named from the city in France” (p. 224).
- GNIS feature 1629985 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for New Orleans, used here for the parish and coordinates.
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