Literature is filled with commentary about the importance of names and naming. “What’s in a name?” pondered English playwright William Shakespeare. The Chinese philosopher Confucius is credited with saying that “the beginning of all wisdom is to call things by their proper name.” Likewise, the Tao Te Ching, the foundational work of Taoism, points out that “naming is the origin of all particular things,” and French author Albert Camus gained fame for his quote “To name things wrongly is to add to the misfortune of the world.”
With this hallowed heritage in mind, National Security Science magazine eagerly set out to uncover the history of naming at Los Alamos National Laboratory. We embarked on an exploration of the significant and inspirational names that brilliant scientists had chosen through the decades—names worthy of one of the largest and most advanced scientific and technical institutions in the world.
Here’s what we found: Eenie, Meenie, Minie, and Moe.
Lab historians and Lab retirees assure us that there’s a story behind these four Los Alamos site names. Before we get to that, let’s start at the beginning, which, like all Los Alamos stories, begins with (you guessed it) the Manhattan Project, the United States’ top-secret effort to build the world’s first atomic bombs to help end World War II. Much of that effort took place at Los Alamos in the early 1940s.
“During the Manhattan Project, the military approach kind of dominated things, and the buildings were generally given letters that indicated what they were,” explains Alan Carr, the Lab’s senior historian. Those letters live on in the names of sites and roads at the Laboratory, such as V-Site and R-Site. (Although most of the letters assigned to sites and roads are meaningless, the S in S-Site refers to Sawmill, as there was a prewar sawmill operation there, and the TD in TD Site stands for Trap Door Site, a reference to a feature on the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan). Slowly, the military traditions that dominated the early days of the Lab began fading. “Over time, as Los Alamos became a permanent community, the Laboratory’s personality started to develop, and that came out in some of these names that we see today,” Carr says.
Drive around the Lab, and you will see street names that reflect locations where nuclear tests once occurred. Bikini Atoll Drive and Enewetak Drive were named after testing sites in the Marshall Islands, and Mercury Road was named after the base camp at the Nevada Test Site (now called the Nevada National Security Sites, NNSS).
Other streets pay tribute to significant experimental machines and technology, historic scientific experiments, and programs. Tokamak (a magnetic fusion machine), Clementine (the world’s first fast neutron reactor), and even Jumbino (small-scale versions of Jumbo, a containment vessel built to recover plutonium from the Trinity test in case the test failed) come to mind.
“I think there was a tremendous amount of pride in the innovation that came out of the Laboratory,” Carr says. “You see that pride reflected both in the streets and facilities at the Lab.”
Some of the names at the Lab are based on local geographic sites, such as Puye, Pajarito, and Chama, paying tribute to the rich cultural heritage of the region, according to Carr. “When we hear people use cultural terms, what does that mean? What is involved? I think that naming and understanding names can be a part of that positive culture that we all want to try to build,” he says.
Other names evolved out of necessity. More than a decade ago, the Los Alamos County 911 emergency system required that all Lab roads and streets be named. “Every single road, no matter how short it was, had to have a name,” Carr says.
Lab historian Ellen McGehee was among those who helped with this effort. “We first identified historical names associated with the technical areas where the streets were located and then used Los Alamos nuclear test names as infill.” Because the United States conducted nearly 1,000 tests before the current testing moratorium went into effect in 1992, there were lots of names to choose from. Among them: Crossroads, Able, Castle, Greenhouse, and Ice Cap.
Both McGehee and Carr say that although the 911 naming was time consuming, it was also important. “One of the main things that brings us together is our shared history,” Carr says. “There is a lot of inspiration in history, and it’s important for an organization to be able to have that shared history and culture. That comes out in the naming of things.”
Carr also emphasizes the need to preserve the reasoning behind the names given. “Names can become almost meaningless within just a generation. It’s funny how quickly things get lost. If you name a conference room after someone, but no one knows who the guy is, does it really honor him?” Carr asks. “Hang a plaque in the conference room so the history doesn’t get lost. Naming something after somebody or something is about inspiring hopefully positive emotions in people. And, when you lose the story, you lose your ability to do that.”
But not every name at the Lab inspires reverence. In fact, many were meant to be funny and were based on comics or private jokes. “Los Alamos has always had a number of practical jokers and people who have great senses of humor, who are clever, and I think that’s part of our DNA historically,” Carr says. Take for instance, Lower Slobbovia, a test site located in a remote part of the Lab. The name comes from the hillbilly comic strip Li’l Abner, which ran from 1934 to 1977 and featured a frigid, faraway, backward country called Slobbovia, ruled by King Stubbornovsky the Last.
“My understanding is that Lower Slobbovia and some of the other firing sites in the far reaches of the Lab were named during the 1950s, when inside jokes were more a part of the culture,” McGehee says.
According to retired Los Alamos scientist Richard Malenfant, a machine built to study uranium and plutonium was named Flattop after a character from Dick Tracy. Malenfant says presumably the name was chosen because the machine was flat on top—as was the cartoon character’s head.
Another example is the road named Godiva, which honors the Lab’s 1950s-era Godiva uranium reactor, an unreflected, or bare, reactor named after Lady Godiva, famous for the ride where she bared it all through the streets of Coventry in the 11th century.
“I love that aspect of the Lab’s personality,” Carr says. “Who doesn’t want to laugh?”
Humorous interpretations of names have also emerged throughout the decades. D was one of the Lab’s early buildings, and when it was replaced, the new building was called D-Prime, or DP. Over the years, employees have offered conjectures that DP stands for Dogpatch, another fictional town from Li’l Abner, and even “Displaced Persons” because the site is fairly remote.
But what about Eenie, Meenie, Minie (all firing sites) and Moe (a magazine site)? Did you think we had forgotten to reveal where these sites got their names? We haven’t forgotten, but it seems everyone else has. “There’s a story behind that,” Carr says. “I’ll have to find someone who remembers.” A few Lab employees claim that these nursery rhyme names (like many other Los Alamos names) have some connection to Li’l Abner. Malenfant, on the other hand, believes the names are meaningless. He says, “Sounds better than one, two, three, and four.” ★
Do you know the history behind any unusual Los Alamos place names that we failed to mention? Email magazine@lanl.gov.