I enjoyed your answer about what the word "casino" means. It got me to thinking about the name Las Vegas. Where does that come from and what other names has Las Vegas been known by?
Las Vegas, in Spanish, means "The Meadows." An easy way to remember the translation is, "The Veggies."
It was named in 1829 by one Rafael Rivera, a scout in the party of Antonio Armijo, a Mexican trader traveling on the Old Spanish Trail from Santa Fe to southern California (which had been blazed in 1776 by two Franciscan friars). Rivera discovered a shortcut along the route that passed by springs bubbling up from an artesian aquifer; he was the first non-Indian to set foot on the land that he called "Las Vegas," for its life-saving water and soul-soothing greenery.
John C. Fremont labeled it Las Vegas Springs on his maps of the area (1844); Octavius Gass, the earliest homesteader, called it Las Vegas Rancho. The ranch was turned over to Archibald Stewart in lieu of payment for a debt and Stewart's widow, Helen, became the first postmistress of what the U.S. government called Las Vegas.
Sin City is the most common synonym or nickname for Las Vegas.
As far as we can tell, the first reference to Las Vegas as Sin City or City of Sin was in the title of a 1963 book penned by two casino executives, Dick Taylor and Pat Howell, Las Vegas: City of Sin? This book was one in a succession of similar "exposés" of Las Vegas released in the early to mid-1960s that combined a wide-eyed view of the city’s glittery surfaces with a peek at its slimy underbelly. The whole era is remembered today as "the Diatribe."
Other nicknames for Las Vegas include: the Entertainment Capital of the World, the Gambling Capital of the World, the Marriage Capital of the World, the Divorce Capital of the World, the Neon Capital of the World, the City of Lights (along with Paris), the City that Never Sleeps (along with New York), the City of Second Chances, and Lost Wages (credited to Milton Berle).
