Many cities in Texas have names in Spanish, the native language of Spain, a western European country. This is so because it was this nation that initially colonized the territory of the southern United States, from California to Texas, and controlled other territories such as Louisiana and Florida for periods.
In this way, many of the current cities in those regions originated as small Spanish towns. Clear examples of this are Amarillo, which means yellow, and Refugio, which means refuge. Other cities with Spanish names in Texas are San Antonio or El Paso, among others.
