Esselen

Meanings

Noun

• An indigenous population native to the region of Big Sur on the Central Coast of California.

Proper Noun

• The language of this people.

Origin

• The name Esselen "probably derived from the name of a major native village", possibly from the village known as Exse'ein, or the place called Eslenes, the site of the Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo. The Spanish extended the term to mean the entire linguistic group (Hester 1978:498-499).