“Gentilly: A New Orleans Plantation in the French Atlantic World, 1818-1851” by Nathalie Dessens and Virginia Meacham Gould, Louisiana State University Press, 288 pages.
I had long assumed that New Orleans’ Gentilly neighborhood earned its name from the area’s quiet, pastoral qualities. It sure is gentle up here, I’d say to myself, while driving past block after block of ample-lawned houses.
Nope. The name is actually a corruption of Chantilly — that original appellation appears on old maps of the city — a northern suburb of Paris…