Albuquerque, New Mexico: Named for a Duke, Minus One R

The governor who founded Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1706 named it for the viceroy, the Duke of Alburquerque, and got scolded for not asking first. The duke’s title had one more r than the city does today, and two of the region’s early historians insisted the shorter spelling was wrong.

A town named without permission

Francisco Cuervo y Valdés took over as acting governor of New Mexico in March 1705, appointed by the viceroy of New Spain, the Duke of Alburquerque. Ralph Emerson Twitchell’s Leading Facts of New Mexican History says that in 1706 Cuervo reported he had founded “the new villa of Alburquerque, and had named the same in his honor,” with thirty families. H. H. Bancroft adds a dry note: it turned out later that in all these reports Cuervo “had considerably overstated his own achievements.”

Mexico City wasn’t thrilled. A 1907 History of New Mexico prints a translation of the July 1706 session where the viceroy and his council answered Cuervo. They agreed to send the new town a bell and church ornaments. Then came the order: “It is ordered that no villages be named without consulting with his excellency,” and the town was to be named “San Phelipe, in memory of his royal majesty,” King Philip V.

Twitchell says the old archives settled on a mix of both, “San Felipe de Alburquerque,” which “shows that the Villa was named for the monarch, Phillip, and the viceroy, the Duke of Alburquerque.” The king got the saint’s name up front. The duke kept the end, and that’s the part that survived.

The missing r

The 1907 history points out that in the 1706 record, “the title of the duke, as well as the name of the town, is spelled in the original ‘Alburquerque.’” You can see the shorter spelling had already won by 1888: the U.S. Geological Survey map above prints ALBUQUERQUE in big capitals.

Bancroft, publishing a year later, wouldn’t go along. He wrote Alburquerque all through his book and noted that the name “is commonly but inaccurately written Albuquerque in N. Mex.” Twitchell, in 1917, put it even more bluntly: the city’s name “has been improperly spelled since the coming of the Anglo-Saxon population.” Neither of them could say who first dropped the letter, and no record here does either.

The duke’s supposed visit

Here’s the catch with some of the older accounts. Henry Gannett’s 1905 federal list of place names says the city was “named for the Spanish Duke of Albuquerque, who visited this spot in 1703-1710.” Twitchell’s account has the duke landing at Veracruz in October 1702 and running New Spain as its 34th viceroy until 1710, and none of these histories mentions a trip to New Mexico. Bancroft also complained that earlier writers had listed the duke as New Mexico’s governor for 1703-10, when he was in fact “another viceroy of Mexico,” and that some “erroneously derive the name from a governor.”

The 1907 history has its own tangle. It says the name Alburquerque was heard as early as 1542 and that Juan de Oñate set up a “Presidio de Alburquerque” on the spot in 1597, then quotes the Bandelier view that the town was founded under the second duke and named for him. Bancroft had already flagged an older claim that Albuquerque dated from 1658, under the first duke. He called it “an error” and said the town was named for the second duke. If you go by the 1706 paperwork, Bancroft’s version is the one that fits.

Gannett also offers a meaning for the title itself: “From the Latin, quercus albus, meaning ‘white oak.’” That’s about the Spanish town the dukes took their title from, and it’s Gannett’s explanation alone. None of the New Mexico histories here weighs in on it.

So the viceroy’s office wanted a king on the map and got one, for a while. The name you’ll find on today’s map is the duke’s, minus one r from his own title.

Sources & further reading

• Ralph Emerson Twitchell, The Leading Facts of New Mexican History, vol. 1 (1911), pp. 421-422. Cuervo’s appointment by the Duke of Alburquerque, the duke as 34th viceroy (1702-1710), the founding report of 1706 and the order to rename the villa San Felipe de Alburquerque.
• Ralph Emerson Twitchell, The Leading Facts of New Mexican History, vol. 3 (1917), pp. 5-6. The founding under Cuervo, “San Felipe de Alburquerque” in the archives, and the name “improperly spelled since the coming of the Anglo-Saxon population.”
• H. H. Bancroft, History of Arizona and New Mexico (1889). The 1658 date called an error and the second duke as namesake (p. 168); the duke wrongly listed as governor (p. 226); the founding, Cuervo’s overstated reports, the rename from San Francisco to San Felipe, and “inaccurately written Albuquerque” (p. 228); the city’s name and spelling in 1889 (p. 788).
• History of New Mexico: Its Resources and People, vol. 2 (1907), pp. 526-528. The translated record of the July 1706 session, “no villages be named without consulting with his excellency,” the original spelling, and the book’s own claims about 1542 and 1597.
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905). The duke “who visited this spot” and the “white oak” explanation.
• GNIS feature 928679 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record and coordinates for Albuquerque.