section_path: Etymology and nicknames
section_name: Etymology and nicknames
paragraph_text: Etymology and nicknames
  
  Before the arrival of European colonists, the indigenous Choctaw people called the area of present-day New Orleans Bulbancha, which translates as "land of many tongues". It appears to have been a contraction of balbáha a̱shah, which means "there are foreign speakers". In his book Histoire de la Louisiane, Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz wrote that the indigenous name referred to the Mississippi River and that the use of the same name for the settlement relates to Native American concepts of the close interaction between rivers and their surrounding land.
  
  The name of New Orleans derives from the original French name, La Nouvelle-Orléans, which was given to the city in honor of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, who served as Louis XV 's regent from 1715 to 1723. The French city of Orléans itself is named after the Roman emperor Aurelian, originally being known as Aurelianum. Thus, by extension, since New Orleans is also named after Aurelian, its name in Latin would translate to Nova Aurelia.
  
  Following the defeat in the Seven Years' War, France formally transferred the possession of Louisiana to Spain, with which France had secretly signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau a year earlier, in the Treaty of Paris of 1763. The Spanish renamed the city Nueva Orleans (pronounced), which was used until 1800. The United States, which had acquired possession from France in 1803, adopted the French name and anglicized it to New Orleans.
  
  New Orleans has several nicknames, including these: