The literal translation of "Boca Raton" is "Mouse Mouth" ("mouse" in Spanish is "ratón"). One explanation for the origin is the Spanish word boca (or mouth) was (and still is) used to describe an inlet and ratón (literally "mouse") was used by Spanish sailors to describe rocks that gnawed at a ship's cable. Ratón was also used to refer to a cowardly thief. You could say Boca Raton refers metaphorically to the sense of pirate's cove or a thief’s inlet. The name Boca Ratones originally appeared on eighteenth century maps associated with an inlet in the Biscayne Bay area of Miami. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the term was mistakenly moved north to its current location on most maps and applied to Lake Boca Ratones whose inlet was closed at the time. The “s” and later the “e” were dropped from the name by the 1920’s..

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