Talk:Chualar, California

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"East of Eden" etymology for Chualar
The etymology "place of *chual*" given in the article is undoubtedly the most common and well-attested one. I was just reading John Steinbeck's East of Eden, though, and in Chapter 2 he writes:


 * When the Spaniards came they had to give everything they saw a name. [...] We have San Miguel, St. Michael, San Ardo, San Bernardo, San Benito, San Lorenzo, San Carlos, San Francisquito. And then the holidays—Natividad, the Nativity; Nacimiente [sic], the Birth; Soledad, the Solitude. But places were also named from the way the expedition felt at the time: Buena Esperanza, good hope; Buena Vista because the view was beautiful; and Chualar because it was pretty. The descriptive names followed: Paso de los Robles because of the oak trees; Los Laureles for the laurels; Tularcitos because of the reeds in the swamp; and Salinas for the alkali which was white as salt.

All of the names in Steinbeck's list make a certain amount of sense to me, except for Chualar. Does anyone know what Steinbeck might have been thinking? My only guess is that this might have been some kind of inside joke on Steinbeck's part, or a subtle way of indicating the narrator's ignorance/bluster (see also the misspelling of "Nacimiento" and maybe the confident identification of "the Solitude" as a holiday when the Soledad mission was founded in October); but I still wonder if I'm missing some folk-etymological connection between some word that sounds like "chualar" and some Spanish word for "pretty". Any thoughts? --Quuxplusone (talk) 18:11, 16 October 2017 (UTC)


 * I don't know about the etymology, but I do think that this passage from a famous novel is worth citing in the article. Coretheapple (talk) 20:05, 18 October 2017 (UTC)