In 1775 the Spanish named this island in the San Francisco Bay Alcatraz, which meant what?

When Spanish naval officer Juan Manuel de Ayala sailed into the San Francisco Bay in 1775, he was tasked with charting the uncharted waters. He gave names to several of the bay's features, including one rocky outcrop he dubbed "La Isla de los Alcatraces." This name translates to "The Island of the Pelicans," as the barren rock was home to a massive population of these large seabirds. While the modern Spanish word for pelican is "pelícano," the older term "alcatraz" was commonly used for pelicans, gannets, and other large sea birds.

Interestingly, historical records and maps suggest that Ayala originally bestowed the name upon a different, larger island in the bay, now known as Yerba Buena Island. The name "Alcatraz" was later mistakenly applied to the smaller, more prominent rock that would eventually become famous. The U.S. Army officially designated the smaller island as Alcatraz in the 1850s when it built a military fortress there, cementing the name in history.

The island's original name offers a stark contrast to its later reputation. Long before it was known as "The Rock," a fearsome federal penitentiary housing notorious criminals, it was simply a sanctuary for seabirds. The name Alcatraz serves as a reminder of the island's wild, natural state before it was transformed into an infamous symbol of incarceration, a place from which escape was thought to be as impossible as it was for its original avian inhabitants to leave.