Port Hueneme-- What’s in a name? Well, when it comes to Port Hueneme, anybody who claims to know exactly how the Friendly City by the Sea got its name is kidding themselves.
ON October 10, 1542, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo anchored near the Chumash settlement at Mugu Lagoon. He was so impressed with their tomols—wooden plank canoes sealed with tar from natural oil seeps- --he named the village Pueblo de las Canoas.
Three days later, he would sail north. He would record seeing a small group of natives camping near what is now Point Hueneme. His log identified the point as Quelqueme; a name historians would assume he had learned from the Chumash at Mugu. Being Spanish, however, he would have written it Quelqueme but pronounced it Wene’me. Now, to make it even more fun, if you anglicize the Spanish phonetic spelling, that’s when you finally get to “Hueneme.”
Linguists tell us that “Quelqueme” incorporates two Chumash words, one meaning “resting place” and the other meaning “halfway.” Either connotation makes perfect sense as “Quelqueme,” while a temporary stop, was halfway between two extensive villages—one at Mugu and the other at the mouth of the Santa Clara River. The natural harbor…
