How Boca Raton got its name

Most people guess the name Boca Raton has something to do with an animal. It doesn’t, and the name didn’t even start here.

Boca, as in inlet

In Spanish, boca means mouth, and on old sailing charts it was the usual word for an inlet: the mouth of a river or a gap in the coast.

A rocky, jagged inlet

The Boca Raton Historical Society describes Boca de Ratones as an old navigational term for a rocky or jagged inlet, the kind of opening where sharp rocks could cut through a ship’s anchor line. It was a warning on a chart, not a description of wildlife.

It started near Miami

Eighteenth-century maps put Boca de Ratones on an inlet in Biscayne Bay, near present-day Miami Beach. The stretch of coast that is now Boca Raton was marked Rio Seco, or “dry river.” Later mapmakers moved the name north to the lagoon we now call Lake Boca Raton, and it stuck.

From Ratones to Raton

The spelling wandered for years: Boca Ratone, Boca Ratones, Boca de Ratones. By the time the town incorporated in 1925 it had settled on Boca Raton, and locals still say it “rah-TONE.”

So the city is named after a dangerous inlet that was originally somewhere else. Not bad for a place this sunny. Browse the shop for gear that celebrates it.