Photo: Echo Park Historical Society

The copyeditor inside me never truly sleeps. And so it has been with Angelino/Angeleno Heights. In this case, it's not just words that matter, but letters -- specifically the change from e to i in the third syllable, which has political as well as sociological underpinnings. It's been an issue for years around Echo Park -- whether it's better with an e or i, and most people I've asked have a ready opinion. My own preference is for an e because that's how it was spelled originally and because it's consistent with the real Spanish history of the area -- as opposed to the real fantasy-production history of the area (at which point we're back to matters of personal taste). In any case, Angeleno Heights, known for the preservation of its Victorian architecture, has the distinction of being the very first Los Angeles neighborhood to achieve historic district status (read HPOZ). And it seems to me that an e plays the bigger role in that achievement.

The city sign on Sunset, however, chooses the Italianate spelling. Whereas Cecilia Rasmussen's Times article last Sunday on Leo Politi (which got me thinking about the choice, once again) goes Spanish -- though that could be a copy error as other L.A. Times stories lean Italian.

I asked Kevin Kuzma, president of the Echo Park Historical Society (which recognizes the Italian style) about his personal preference, and he offered some insight:

All parcels within the original Angeleno Heights tract still have this spelling in their legal description, as they have since 1886.

While I don't know definitively why this change happened, I sure hope there's more to it than a bias against a Spanish spelling.

There's a chapter in Los Angeles, End of the Rainbow (at least I think that's the title) called "Our Italy" about the branding of Southern California in the first part of the 20th century as a domestic resort destination for...Americans. After all, as seen in novels like Room With A View, Italy was becoming very popular with English tourists of means.

Maybe that's overplaying a spelling change, but I think that sort of thing is at least partly responsible for the change.

Meanwhile, in September 2007 LAist looked into the matter with an informative post:

LAist:

It seems by all accounts that the area was first subdivided and named as Angeleno Heights in 1886. The Editor of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen said in response to a January 2007 letter from a reader on this very topic that oftentimes names were Anglicized, and that people such as himself preferred to use the traditional "e" spelling as reference to the name Los Angeles and as a stylistic choice. The conflation is understandable; frequently in print many people today remain divided over the proper use of the term Angeleno or Angelino to denote a residential affiliation with the City of Los Angeles, so the confusion here seems par for the course. There is of course, the matter of the actual Neighborhood sign (pictured above). Would it have killed the City to have included the "ei" and "h" to fully spell out Heights? I mean, they managed to get all the letters on the more burdensome Brentwood Village signs. I'm just sayin'.

One neighborhood activist wrote on an Angeleno Heights neighborhood list that he:

...recently contacted Councilman Reyes' office about correcting our neighborhood's name. The historically correct name is spelled, "Angeleno" Heights. The city will be changing the signs around our neighborhood to reflect the correct name.

Not sure if anything has come of that, since the sign has not been changed. So, for now, it will be spelled this way here, that way there, meaningful in its inconsistency.