It’s not named for a woman. Bonnie brae is Scottish Gaelic for “pretty hill”. That’s enough to explain the etymology of the Bonnie Brae tract, which opened in 1886: its ads did promise a “panoramic view” and an “elevated location”. But the tract’s developers George A. Dobinson and John A. Fairchild – neither of whom was Scottish – might have also been inspired by a lemon, of all things. The prizewinning Bonnie Brae lemon came from the Bonnie Brae Ranch in Bonita, near San Diego. As lemons go, it was all the rage in the 1880s, and Southern Californians were certainly not averse to naming streets after fruits. Whatever its origins, today’s Bonnie Brae Street once consisted of at least six smaller streets with various names. City Council cleaned up the mess in 1889 by decreeing that they all be renamed Bonnie Brae.
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