AUSTIN, Texas – The pronunciation for Manchaca Road can be perplexing for non-Austinites.
"I think it sounds a little off," said Frank Rodriguez, who is visiting from Eagle Pass.
"I can’t help but laugh being that my family is very Hispanic and they do come out of Mexico," said Victoria Alvarez, a Uvalde resident.
But longtime Austin resident Chad Sakonchick said: "I mean, everybody in every locale says things different and they pronounce things differently. I think it's kind of a right of passage as an Austinite to call it by the name that we all are used to."
Retired Judge Bill Perkins believes the Travis County road is not only mispronounced, it’s been misspelled for more than 100 years. As the founder of Justice for Jose Antonio Menchaca, he claims the street is named for the Texas Revolutionary, who fought in the Battle of San Jacinto.
Menchaca, a solider and politician, was a defender of San Antonio and Travis County during the Revolution in 1836 at the Battle of San Jacinto.
Born in San Antonio, Menchaca fought as a Tejano officer later becoming an activist. According to the Facebook group Justice for Menchaca, the night after the Battle of San Jacinto a command staff took down the names of all of the soldiers who participated.
The group claims that the commander who recorded the names of the Tejano company did not known Spanish and misspelled every single name. Therefore, Menchaca was recorded as Manchaca.
Nearly 182 years later and the misspelling continued in Austin. Even trickling down into the phone books, where people with the last name Menchaca were listed as Manchaca.
In 1940, when an Austin clerk was confronted with the issue he reportedly said: “Around here we spell it Manchaca.”
“The way its spelled right now it separates the family, the separates the descendants of Menchaca from their namesake,” Perkins said.
The Justice for Menchaca group collected more than $24,000 to have the City of Austin change the name of the eight-mile stretch of road in 2016. Petitions were also filed with 1,077 names in favor of the change.
"You can’t honor somebody if you spelled their name wrong," Perkins said.
The history of how Manchaca got its name is still disputed, however. The Manchaca Onion Creek Historical Association argued in 2015 that the community was named after Manchaca Springs. Spectrum News emailed them for a comment, but did not receive a response.
All affected property owners along Manchaca Road will now be notified about the proposed street name change. If anyone objects, a public hearing with the City Council is required.
The process seems as long as the street, but the traditions may be harder to break.
