TOWN COULD HAVE BEEN deCoteau

If the three French-Canadian brothers had kept the old spelling of the family name, would an Alameda County town be named for them?

Maybe not.  Perhaps the founding fathers would have felt "deCoteau" posed problem in pronunciation or spelling, but the problem never came up because generations back, the deCoteau family had changed the spelling to Decoto.

Today, the name belongs to a district of Union City and has a street named after Ezra Decoto.

Ezra Decoto is the founder of Decoto, California.  He came to California via the Ishmus of Panama, arriving in San Francisco in 1854.