Most people who have some knowledge of San Diego history will generally recognize that Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo was the first European to set foot on San Diego soil in 1542 when he discovered what is now San Diego Bay. And many will generally assume that it was Cabrillo who named this new territory “San Diego.”
If not Cabrillo, then many might think it was the famous Franciscan friar, Junipero Serra, who named the colony San Diego when he established the first of California’s Franciscan missions in 1769.
If you thought it was Cabrillo or Serra, you would be wrong.
So who really named San Diego?
In fact, this newly discovered area (well, new to Europeans… Native Americans had been here all along) was named after another Spanish explorer who arrived some 60 years after Cabrillo.
According to the San Diego Historical Society, Sebastián Vizcaíno arrived in San Diego in November 1602 after sailing from Acapulco the previous May. It took six months for his fleet to reach San Diego Bay.
San Diego was the name of Vizcaino’s flagship (it had four ships, but only three made it to San Diego). He declared that the area would be called San Diego, both in honor of his ship and for the feast of San Diego de Alcalá (a Spanish Franciscan) that took place on November 12.
And the name stuck ever since. If Vizcaino’s flagship had been one of its other ships, the Santo Tomás, maybe we would be living and visiting beautiful sunny Santo Tomás instead of San Diego!
