They went thru the phase that it was MERVYN'S CALIFORNIA...and they had California in script.TenPoundHammer wrote:One chain that was rather oddly dispersed until recently was Mervyns. Their operations were mostly in the West, but they did spread out to Louisiana, Florida, and Georgia, as well as a handful in Michigan and Minnesota (the MI and MN stores evidently a result of Dayton-Hudson acquisition).
The FL locations were all former Jordan Marsh stores which were sold to Dillard's a couple years later, while the GA locations seem to have just been random additions that went as fast as they came. LA, OK, MI and MN were all wiped out in 2006, of course.
Also, the Bon-Ton skipped over VA, NC, and SC entirely to have one store in Georgia (more specifically, the now-demolished Riverbend Mall in Rome) after acquiring Hess's in 1994. Similarly, Hess's only had one store in NC, and none in SC at all, despite two different stores in Rome, GA (Riverbend Mall, and a replacement at Mount Berry Square).
I read that the chain was named after founder Mervin. When the original sign arrived for the first store...it was spelled Mervyn. Mervin just had them leave it...and never changed it.