Lafayette has been called a lot of things, but how did Lafayette become the official name for the city and parish?
The current Lafayette area was first inhabited by the Atakapa-Ishak and Canneci (Lipan Apache) Tribes and the competing Choctaw Tribes.
Along the Vermilion River, there was a trading outpost near the Pinhook Bridge that had been used for centuries by Indigenous people. It was called “Pinsahuk,” or Pinhook, which means Linden or Basswood tree. The outpost was used by French fur trappers and by the Spanish in the 1700s. Beyond the outpost, nothing bigger than a pirogue, flat boat or small barge could navigate the Vermilion River.
Read more: Celebrating the people, places, history and heritage of Lafayette Parish
In the late 1700s, the first wave of immigrants, including the exiled Acadians, who flocked to south Louisiana created settlements along the Vermilion River, surrounding bayous.
The area was named Attakapas County in 1805 by Louisiana Gov. William C. C. Claiborne. It consisted of present day St. Martin, St. Mary, Vermilion, Lafyette and Acadia parishes.
In the early 1820s, Jean Mouton, who was part of an affulent family in the area, laid out a cross-grid town and named is St. Jean du Vermilionville, which was eventually shoretened to Vermilionville.
In 1823, the Louisiana legislature carved Lafayette Parish out from the western portion of St. Martin Parish. At that time, Lafayette Parish included present-day Acadia and Vermilion parishes. Lafayette Parish was named after the Marquis de Lafayette who was getting ready to take a tour of the United States. Lafayette was a a French aristocrat and military officer who fought with colonists against the British in the Revolutionary War. He was considrered a hero of the Amerian and French revolutions.
The name Vermilionville remained until 1869 when a legilsative charter ameneded to rename it Lafayette. But there was another Lafayette — a suburb of New Orleans. In 1884, that suburb was incroperated into New Orleans, officially allowing Vermilionville to become Lafayette, which remains the city’s name to this day.