GOOD OLD DAYS:

Love of history comes naturally to Phil Brigandi.

After joining the county’s historical commission at 18, the county archivist has made it his life’s work to dig into the area’s history.

His latest book, “Orange County Place Names A to Z,” details monikers from the common to the bizarre — including many in Newport-Mesa.

“Place names are also just such a great way to lay out history in little bite-size chunks,” Brigandi said.

The stories behind some of the area’s place names are as obvious as they seem.

“Newport was simply that — a ‘new port,’ ” Brigandi said.

Other names are far more perplexing.

“The Arches is certainly one that people get backward,” Brigandi said. “They say it’s named for the overpass on Coast Highway. In fact, the Arches was originally a little service station and cafe there at Coast Highway.”

“I’m amazed at how many people don’t know why Jamboree Road is Jamboree Road,” Brigandi said. “In 1953, 50,000 people came to Irvine Ranch for the Boy Scout Jamboree.”

Brigandi also highlighted locations in Costa Mesa that are common misnomers, such as its border with Santa Ana.

“Old-timers would have called it Gospel Swamp,” Brigandi said.

After the Civil War, many Southerners settled in the area, which also became a home for many tent preachers who held revival meetings. In the 1870s, a local wife dubbed the former area Gospel Swamp.

“It’s such a great name that it stuck,” Brigandi said.

Closer to the river, a knot of Northerners lived in Republican Bend.

Costa Mesa was originally known as Harper; other communities like Fairview became merged with Costa Mesa when they began to decline.

“Farther north, there was an area that wasn’t even a town,” Brigandi said.

Paularino was the result of butchering the name of a Mexican ranchero named Eduardo Polloreno.

“Everyone says Orange County was named for the orange trees,” Brigandi said.

But the name was first proposed in 1872, when there wasn’t a single orange grove in the county; real estate agents simply were keen to portray the area as a paradise.

“Oranges fit in with that image as this luscious, semi-tropical fruit,” Brigandi said. “As it turned out, of course, this turned into a major orange-growing area.”

Brigandi’s book can be found at Barnes & Noble and amazon.com. He hopes it will stir curiosity in both longtime natives and new residents.

“This is a lot of what local history is about, I think. We need that so desperately in Southern California — for people to connect to the place they live.”

CANDICE BAKER can be reached at (949) 494-5480 or at [email protected].