Trip to San Francisco, USA | Crooked Street, Lombard Street | USA diaries

San Francisco, which is Spanish for "Saint Francis", takes its name from Mission San Francisco de Asís, which in turn was named after Saint Francis of Assisi. The mission received its name in 1776, when it was founded by the Spanish under the leadership of Padre Francisco Palóu. The city has officially been known as San Francisco since 1847, when Washington Allon Bartlett, then serving as the city's alcalde, renamed it from Yerba Buena (Spanish for "Good Herb"), which had been the name of the first civilian pueblo in San Francisco. Earlier in San Francisco's history, the uninhabited area on the northeastern side of San Francisco was called El Paraje de Yerba Buena, after the herb that was growing abundantly there. The name Yerba Buena continues to be used in locations in the city, such as on Yerba Buena Island.
When using a nickname or abbreviation, local residents most commonly refer to San Francisco as "the City" or "SF." Although the nickname "Frisco" has a local pedigree dating at least to 1850 and has been used by some local residents in every generation since then, the uses of both "Frisco" and the historically more recent "San Fran" tend to elicit sharp divisions among residents.
The California Cantonese who came for the California Gold Rush named California and specifically San Francisco 金山, Gāmsāan, "Gold Mountain". When gold was discovered in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, it was named "New Gold Mountain" (Yue Chinese: 新金山, Sān Gāmsāan) and California and San Francisco as "Old Gold Mountain" (舊金山, Gāu Gāmsāan).