La La land

A fanciful place of dreamy unreality that popular American etymology would have us believe derives from L.A. or Los Angeles with its connotations of Hollywood dreams of stardom. If this is true, and dating from the late 1970s, as the Americans say it does, then it should of course be spelt LA LA Land. There is, however, evidence of an earlier citation from 1925, oddly enough in a Los Angeles newspaper, that names France as the original la la land, from the French expression ‘ooh la la’. A third theory is that it may just be derived from the simple ‘la la la’ of singing a song without the proper words, which, at a bit of a stretch, could also be construed as a form of dreamy unreality. The search for the correct etymology is probably best left to the Americans as it does appear to be American in origin and further endorsed by the Oscar-winning American musical La La Land (2016), which was set in Los Angeles. The British, meanwhile, are probably better off with Never-never land as the home of Peter Pan from J.M.Barrie’s Peter Pan (1904).