When a series of A-B-C streets north of Pico finally received proper names in February 1897, B Street became Berendo. What’s a “berendo”? Good question. The city’s street renaming commission spent weeks brainstorming more than 300 new monikers that winter, often favoring Spanish or at least Spanish-sounding ones. (Southwest expert Charles Fletcher Lummis, who was on the commission, might have been behind that.) So as C Street became Catalina and F Street became Fedora, B Street’s new name was most likely a misspelling of berrendo, Spanish for “pronghorn”, a cousin to the antelope that’s native to western North America. Another translation of berrendo is “two-colored” – like the pronghorn.
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