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San Pablo

San Pablo

3 2.2
A town near Oakland on the east side of San Francisco Bay
  • proper noun
: San Pablo
  • At Casino San Pablo, the executive chef is Tom Wicinski, who trained at the Harvard of restaurant schools, the Culinary Institute of America.
  • San Pablo Avenue

Examples

  • Many people commute from San Pablo to jobs in Oakland and San Francisco.

  • I visited San Pablo last summer.

  • She grew up in San Pablo and often visited the nearby bay.

  • The new community center in San Pablo has become a local gathering place.

  • Have you ever been to San Pablo?

  • Lobato grew up in the village of San Pablo, part of a family that traces its roots in the United States back generations.

  • Tony graduated a year before Zahira, but both ended up living at the Living Skills Center in San Pablo, where the visually impaired learn to use canes, cook, bank, shop, and do laundry.

Surface Forms

San Pablo main

Morphology

San + Pablo

The components 'San' (Saint) and 'Pablo' (Paul) make clear that this is a place-name built from a saint's name, so a learner who knows those constituents can infer it is a toponym referring to 'Saint Paul'. However, the specific referent—namely a particular town in western California on the east shore of San Francisco Bay—cannot be derived from the constituents alone, so the meaning is only partially predictable.

Etymology

San Pablo: The town name San Pablo comes from the Spanish words San and Pablo, which mean 'Saint Paul'. Early Spanish settlers and priests often named places after saints, so imagine a small mission and a statue of 'Saint Paul' by the bay near Oakland to remember this town.