Agua Mansa (still water, smooth-running current). One writer, for what reason does not appear, defines this as “house water.” This place is in Southern California, near Colton.
Agua Puerca (dirty or muddy water).
Agua Puerca y las Trancas (muddy water and the bars, or stiles). This was the peculiar title of a land grant, based, no doubt, upon some trivial circumstance now forgotten. One writer has translated it as “water fit for pigs and Frenchmen,” a gratuitous insult to the French people of which the Spaniards were not guilty. This writer evidently mistook the word puerca (muddy or dirty) for puerca (sow), and by some strange twist of the imagination, seems to have taken trancas to mean Frenchmen!
Agua Tibia (tepid or warm water, warm spring). See page [36].
Agua de Vida (water of life).
Aguilar (the place of eagles).
Las Águilas (the eagles). Real de las Águilas means the “camp of the eagles.”
Ahwanee (an Indian place name), popularly but not authentically translated as “a deep or grassy valley,” is the name of a place in Madera County.
“A-wa-ni was the name of a large village standing directly at the foot of Yosemite Fall.”—(Powers’ Tribes of California.)