How New Mexico Got Its Name Before It Had a Place

New Mexico had its name before anyone knew where to put it, because Spaniards in the 1560s were already talking about finding a “new Mexico” up north. The name finally landed on the pueblo country up the Rio Grande, and Bancroft figured that was because its people and towns looked a lot like those of the Valley of Mexico. Two explorers gave it other names, and you’ve probably never heard either one.

A “new Mexico” waiting for a place

In H. H. Bancroft’s 1889 History of Arizona and New Mexico, the story starts with Francisco de Ibarra. Coming back from his expeditions of 1563 to 1565, Governor Ibarra “boasted that he had discovered a ‘new Mexico’ as well as a new Vizcaya.” Bancroft thinks that may be how the name later came to be used for “a country that Don Francisco had probably never seen.”

A few years later, in 1568, mining prospectors from Mazapil found a lake that was “formally named Laguna del Nuevo Mexico,” apparently in what’s now the Mexican state of Coahuila. “The tendency to find a ‘new Mexico’ in the north is noticeable,” Bancroft writes. In his words, the name had been “in a sense invented and held in readiness for future grand discoveries.”

San Felipe and Nueva Andalucía

Then came the explorers. Fray Agustín Rodríguez’s expedition called the country San Felipe. Antonio Espejo, who visited 74 pueblos, called it Nueva Andalucía. Bancroft says that good authorities, old and new, have credited each of them with the name New Mexico, but each one actually called the place something else. Espejo even titled his report as a trip to “la Nueva Mexico,” the country he says he named Nueva Andalucía.

What really happened, he says, is that the name was given in Mexico itself, “under circumstances not fully recorded,” after Chamuscado’s men came back and while Espejo was still away. The first use he could find was in an essay by Río de Losa. Early documents also say “San Felipe de Nuevo Mexico,” which blends the two. The name was often written Nueva Mexico, in the feminine.

Why “Mexico”? Bancroft thought the reason was simple. Compared with the huts of the wandering tribes, the people and buildings of the pueblos looked a lot like those of the Valley of Mexico. His notes mention other guesses from earlier writers, like one who thought it was because so many people lived there, but the likeness is the answer Bancroft went with. Henry Gannett, writing for the U.S. Geological Survey in 1905, kept it even shorter: “Territory of the Union, named from the country of Mexico.”

The name changes flags

The name outlasted Spain and Mexico both, and it didn’t even need changing. In August 1846, during the war with Mexico, the American general Stephen W. Kearny took Santa Fe. His proclamation said he would hold the province “as a part of the U. S., and under the name of the territory of New Mexico.” So the “new Mexico” the Spanish had dreamed up for some place up north is the one you can find today on a map of the United States.

Sources & further reading

• H. H. Bancroft, History of Arizona and New Mexico (1889). Ibarra’s expeditions of 1563 to 1565 (p. 72); Ibarra’s boast of “a ‘new Mexico’ as well as a new Vizcaya,” “a country that Don Francisco had probably never seen,” and the Laguna del Nuevo Mexico of 1568 (p. 73); Rodríguez’s party naming the pueblo region up the Rio Grande San Felipe (p. 76); the title of Espejo’s report, “la Nueva Mexico, á quien puse por nombre la Nueva Andalucia” (p. 81); Espejo’s 74 pueblos (p. 90); the name “invented and held in readiness,” Nueva Mexico in the feminine, San Felipe and Nueva Andalucía, the name given in Mexico “under circumstances not fully recorded,” Río de Losa’s essay, “San Felipe de Nuevo Mexico,” the likeness to the Valley of Mexico, and, in a note, other writers’ explanations (p. 91); Stephen W. Kearny and his Army of the West (p. 409); the march and the taking of Santa Fe on August 18, 1846 (pp. 415–416); Kearny’s proclamation, “under the name of the territory of New Mexico” (p. 417).
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 224. “Territory of the Union, named from the country of Mexico.”
• U.S. Census Bureau, state codes (2020). Lists New Mexico’s permanent federal place-name record number (GNIS 897535).