Welcome to L.A. Street Names, the origin stories of street names across Los Angeles County, from the shortest cul-de-sacs to the longest boulevards. Mysteries solved, myths debunked, scandals exposed, history revealed. This is an ongoing project with more than 1,700 streets – and growing. See FAQ for more information.
Featured Major Street
Ximeno Avenue
It’s the only thoroughfare in Los Angeles County that starts with X. Given its perplexing pronunciation, you can see why there aren’t more. For while a Spanish speaker would pronounce Ximeno “hee-MAY-no”, it’s a Long Beach tradition to say “ex-IMM-en-o”. Why such an unusual street name? Here’s my hypothesis: it’s a fact that the Alamitos Beach townsite was laid out in 1886 with twenty alphabetically-arranged avenues, starting with Alamitos as the “A” and ending with Termino as the “T”. I believe someone designed Ximeno as the “X” in an eastward expansion of these avenues – it is four blocks east of Termino, after all – and for some reason the “U”, “V”, and “W” names never materialized. At any rate, some say this street’s inspiration is Jimena Díaz de Vivar (c. 1046 – c. 1116), wife of the great Spanish hero El Cid. In her era, “Jimena” would have indeed been spelled “Ximena” – so why not Ximena Avenue? A more plausible namesake is Manuel Jimeno Casarín (1815-1853), occasional acting governor of Alta California during Mexican rule. Old records show that he sometimes went by “Ximeno”.