American Language Supplement 2 (117 page)
Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
A. Howry Espenshade’s “Pennsylvania Place Names”
3
is a volume of 375 pages and lists more than 1200 names. It is not to be mentioned in the same breath with McArthur’s “Oregon Geographic Names,” but there is nevertheless a lot of useful information in it, and it will form a springboard for some later, more comprehensive and better arranged work. It was preceded by small studies by Henry W. Shoemaker
4
and Stephen G. Boyd
5
and followed by others by George P. Donehoo
6
and William Pierce Randel.
7
Rhode Island, as I have recorded, produced one of the earliest studies of American place-names, that of Usher Parsons in 1861, but since then little has been done in the field.
There is a State Geographic Board and in 1932 it brought out an “Official Gazetteer of Rhode Island” in collaboration with the United States Geographic Board, but the remaining literature is mainly only local in interest. In 1941 the Federal Writers’ Project for South Carolina published at Columbia a volume entitled “Palmetto Place Names,” but it was far from complete and is now out of print.
1
The fact that South Dakota has a volume on its place-names comparable to McArthur’s on those of Oregon is due to the enterprise of Dr. Edward C. Ehrensperger, professor of the English language and literature in its State University at Vermillion.
2
At the suggestion of Robert L. Ramsay of Missouri, before mentioned, he put some of his candidates for the M.A. degree to work investigating the place-names of the State, and presently he had in hand a series of valuable theses. When the Federal Writers’ Project undertook to deal with the same names, he lent his materials and his skill to the business, and the result was a really first-rate report. It is laid out upon a somewhat unhandy plan, with separate alphabets for towns, counties, rivers, mountains, etc., but the extraordinary richness of the data assembled makes the user forget this defect, and soon or late it will probably be remedied in a revision based upon a single alphabet. There is no comprehensive treatise on Tennessee names, but there have been brief discussions of them by Horace Kephart,
3
P. M. Fink,
4
A. W. McWhorter
5
and James A. Still.
6
Kephart lists such curiosities as
No Time, Big Soak
and
Go
Forth
from the Tennessee Pamirs and Fink unearths
Venus, Bacchus
and
Lesbia
from the effete lowlands.
1
Texas has a good guide to the names of its 2,148 postoffices in “Texas Towns,” by Fred I. Massengill.
2
J. Frank Dobie, the authority on the folklore of the Southwest, has published some papers on other place-names of the State,
3
and there is a book on the 254 county names by Z. T. Fulmore,
4
but the rest of the writing on the subject is journalistic and thin.
5
Utah has a mimeographed volume in the Federal Writers’ Project series,
6
but “origin of name unknown” follows many of its 400-odd entries. It shows that the Mormons have had relatively little influence upon the geographical nomenclature of their Zion. They failed at the outset in their effort to call it
Deseret
, a term appearing in the Book of Mormon,
7
and had to submit to
Utah
, the name of a tribe of Shoshone Indians, chiefly notable for their thieving and neglect of personal hygiene.
8
No Utah county bears a name taken from the Book of Mormon, though several have the names of early Mormon worthies. There is a small village called
Deseret
, and others bearing the Mormon names of
Lehi, Manti, Nephi
and
Moroni
, but such borrowings are not numerous. Most of the settlements of the State have flabby names,
e.g., Centerville, Riverdale, Coal City, Clearfield
and
Lakeside. Upalco
is derived from Uintah Power and Light Company, and
Veyo
was begotten by butchering
verdure
and
youth
and then grafting their fragments. Most of the picturesque early names have been obliterated by the growth of delicacy. What was once the
village of
Carcass Creek
is now
Grover, Poverty Flat
is
Torrey, Sahara
is
Zane
(from
Zane
Gray), and
Sodom
is
Goshen
.
I come to Vermont, and have nothing to say, for its place-names seem to have been given no attention by its native savants.
1
Those of Virginia have done but little better. Forty years ago Charles M. Long published a book on the names of the State’s counties,
2
and in 1940 George Davis McJimsey produced an exhaustive and excellent study of its topographical terms (not place-names),
3
but aside from these there is not much to report.
4
The State of Washington has books on its place-names by Edmond S. Meany
5
and Henry Landes,
6
but both belong to an earlier generation, and there has been but little activity in the matter in recent years. In West Virginia, as I have noted, there is the book of Hamill Kenny, published in 1945 – a large and extremely valuable work, worthy to be ranked with those of McArthur on Oregon and Ehrensperger on South Dakota. Indeed, there are details in which it is superior to everything else of its sort – for example, in the richness of its notes on history and legend. It is preceded by an admirable introduction dealing with the methodology of place-name study, and there is a good bibliography.
7
The study of the place-names
of Wisconsin was begun in 1854 with a report to the State Historical Society by Alfred Brunson. It was resumed by the Rev. Chrysostom Verwyst in 1892 with a monograph upon those of Chippewa origin,
1
and continued a decade later by Henry E. Legler,
2
but after that there was nothing more until Dr. Frederic G. Cassidy, of the State university, undertook a study of the place-names of Dane county, surrounding Madison.
3
This brings us to Wyoming, the literature of which appears to be confined to a pamphlet on its stream-names, brought out by the State Game and Fish Department
4
and a brief but excellent paper by Dr. Wilson O. Clough, of the State university.
5
The French names of Canada resemble the Spanish names of the Southwest in that they are frequently very long,
e.g., Saint-Jean-Baptiste de l’Ile Verte, Notre-Dame de Lourdes de Montjoli
and
Coeur-Très-Pur de la Bienheureuse Vierge Marie de Plaisance
, but usually though not always, it is the last element that is used for everyday purposes, not the first or a middle one, as in the case of
Los Angeles
. Some of the combinations of French and English are not without humor,
e.g., Notre-Dame de l’Assomption de Mac-Nider
and
Saint-Henri des Tanneries
. Canada has had a Geographic Board like our own since 1897,
6
and there is another for Quebec alone, where the great majority of place-names are French, and a Nomenclature Board for Newfoundland. The first has endeavored to preserve locally accepted name-forms whenever possible, but is required by law to follow forms “found in the statutes, proclamations, orders in council or other official acts of a Province”
establishing districts or communities, and it has frequently been troubled by the fact that, in the French districts, many towns have two names, one French and the other English,
e.g., Trois-Rivières
and
Three Rivers
. Also it has been considerably harassed by demands from Quebec that all the
c
’s in place-names be changed to
k
’s, on the ground that, in French,
c
is used only in foreign loans.
1
The board has got rid of the offending
k
in many Indian names by approving the substitution of French names,
e.g., Dufresnoy
for
Kajakanikamak
, but it survives defiantly in many others,
e.g., Kakekekwaki
.
2
Canada, like the United States, is afflicted by the heavy duplication of names. There are thirty-seven
Blanche
rivers in Quebec alone, and hundreds of names, in the Dominion as a whole, embodying
Moose, Trout, Bear, Deer
, etc. The picturesque names translated from the Indian languages by the pioneers, or invented by their own fancy, are under fire and many have been changed.
Moose Factory
, on James Bay, is now
Moosonoe, Rat Portage
is
Kenora
and
Pile o’ Bones
creek is
Regina
. But
Medicine Hat
and
Moosejaw
happily survive.
The Geographic Board has published a number of valuable monographs on the place-names of various parts of Canada,
e.g.
, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island and the Thousand Islands. There is also a considerable literature on the subject by private inquirers, among them Pierre-Georges Roy,
3
W. F. Ganong,
4
H. L. Keenleyside,
5
George H. Armstrong,
6
John T. Walbran,
7
W. F. Moore,
8
Frank
Eames,
1
Charles N. Bell
2
and Thomas J. Brown.
3
The origin of
Canada
has long engaged geographers and many fantastic etymologies have been offered, but the predominance of opinion today seems to favor its derivation from an Indian word,
kanata
, which is defined by Roy as meaning
ville, village, amas de cabànes, bourgade, bourg, groupe de tentes, campement de plusieurs
. The Indian guides of the early explorers called out
kanata
every time they passed a village on the St. Lawrence, and the explorers mistook the word for the name of the country.
4
In AL4, p. 115, I have listed some of the novelties in geographical nomenclature which appeared with the settlement of America. Such ancient English terms as
moor, heath, dell, fell, fen, weald
and
combe
5
disappeared from the vocabulary, and in place of them there arose a large stock of novelties,
e.g., branch, run, fork, bluff, hollow, bottom, lick, neck, gap, notch, divide, knob
and
flat
. A few of these, to be sure, were known in England, but they were not common there, whereas in the new land they became words of everyday. As the settlements extended terms were borrowed from the French,
e.g., rapids, prairie
and
butte;
from the Dutch,
e.g., hook
and
kill
,
6
and from the Spanish,
e.g., cany on, mesa
and
sierra
.
7
Rather curiously, no Indian term seems to have been taken in
8
save
only
bayou
, which came from the Choctaw
bayuk
through the French. Many of these terms are confined to relatively small areas. Those from the Dutch are scarcely to be found outside southeastern New York and northern New Jersey, and many from the Spanish are understood only in the Southwest,
e.g., arroyo
and
vega Butte
and
coulee
, which are from the French, are pretty well limited to the West, and I am assured by a Southern correspondent that
run
is rare south of Virginia,
1
just as
pond
for a natural body of water is rare outside New England.
Gulch
, which is of uncertain origin, is commonly thought of as Western today, but the DAE’s first example, dated 1835, is from Newfoundland.
Notch
is used in New England for what is commonly called a
gap
south of New York.
Creek
, which is mainly applied to an arm of the sea in England, has the same sense along the Chesapeake, but elsewhere it usually means a small country stream.
Swamp
, as I have noted in Supplement I, pp. 496–97, is unknown in England save as an exoticism, and so are
barrens, bad lands
and
bluff
.
2
How many place-names are there in the United States? Allen Walker Read, in a paper read before the American Dialect Society at Indianapolis, December 30, 1941, ventured to guess “well over a million,” and in view of the fact that Ramsay and his associates have unearthed 32,324 in Missouri alone this estimate seems quite reasonable. In addition, there are many thousands of obsolete names,
recoverable from old maps and records, and George R. Stewart once told me that he thought they might amount to another million. Thus the field of place-name study is immense, with room in it for an army corps of investigators.
1
See AL4, pp. 234–36.
2
Pennsylvania Place Names, by A. Howry Espenshade; State College (Pa.), 1925, p. 120.
3
See AL4, p. 539.
4
There is a good discussion of it in Indian Place-Names of the Penobscot Valley and the Maine Coast, by Fannie Hardy Eckstorm; Orono (Maine), 1941, pp. 1 and 2.
5
The etymology of the name is discussed at length in A History of the Origin of the Place Names in Nine Northwestern States; Chicago, 1908, pp. 102–03.
1
“The main problem of American place-name study,” said the distinguished German philologian, Max Förster of Munich, in
American Speech
, Oct., 1939, p. 213, “seems to me the investigation of American names of Indian origin.… There is only one drawback: that the scientific study of Indian languages and dialects is hardly advanced enough to form a safe basis.”
2
Washington, 1933, p. 12.
3
Sixth Report of the United States Geographic Board, just cited, pp. 13–14. The DAE shows that there was an inn called the
Conestoga Waggon
in Philadelphia in 1750.
1
American Place-Names, by Louis N. Feipel,
American Speech
, Nov., 1925, p. 83.
2
Spanish and Indian Place Names of California, by Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez; San Francisco, 1914, p. 47. The Geographical Board long ago declared for
Tia Juana
, but most American newspapers use
Tijuana
.
3
The process was witnessed on a large scale in France during the two World Wars.
Ypres
became
Wipers, Isigny
became
Easy Knee
, and
Bricquebec
became
Bricabrac
. The French themselves began it in Napoleonic times by giving a village in Spain the name of the English
Horse Guards
– and then turning it into
Hossegar
. See Some Folk Etymologies for Place Names, by J. W. Aston,
Journal of American Folklore
, April-June, 1944, pp. 139–40.
4
A Dictionary of Spanish Terms in English, by Harold W. Bentley; New York, 1932, p. 17.
5
Language Mixture in American. Place Names, by Mamie Meredith,
American Speech
, Feb., 1930, p. 224.
1
Bentley just cited, says that there are more than 400 in California and more than 250 in New Mexico.
2
Der deutschamerikanische Farmer, by J. T. Och; Cincinnati, 1913, pp. 228–35.
3
French Names in Our Geography, by Henry G. Bayer,
Romanic Review
, July-Sept., 1930, pp. 195–203.
4
Roy W. Swanson, in Scandinavian Place-Names in the American Danelaw,
Swedish-American Historical Bulletin
, Aug., 1929, p. 8, says that he has counted more than 400 in that State. In The Viking and the Red Man; two volumes; New York, 1940–42, Reider T. Sherwin argues that many place-names presumed to be of Indian origin were actually borrowed by the Indians from Norse settlers of a thousand years ago. These settlers, he says, were absorbed by the Indians, and gave many Norse loans to their languages.
5
In the
Hamburger Tageblatt
, July 8, 1934, briefed in the
American-German Review
, Dr. Norbert Zimmer called attention to the curious fact that most of the German place-names of the United States are of Low German origin, though the early German immigration was predominantly from Western, Central and Southern Germany.
6
A run feeding the north branch of the Susquehanna. The Geographic Board warns that it is not to be written
Quenshhague, Quineshakony
or
Quinneshockeny
.
1
The name of a brook in New Hampshire. I should add that the Geographic Board abolished it in 1916 and ordered that the brook be called
Beaver
. Many other Indian names have been similarly displaced. J. H. Trumbull, in his Indian Names and Places, Etc., In and On the Borders of Connecticut; Hartford, 1881, recorded that the
Anchamaunnackkaunack
, a pond near Stonington, had become
Lake Amos
, and that an eminence originally
Puckhunkonnuck
was
Pendleton Hill
. In her Letters From the United States, Cuba and Canada; New York, 1856, p. 324, the Hon. Amelia M. Murray was deploring the disappearance of
Natchovtashmuck
and
Nassamasschaick
from the map of the Massachusetts Berkshires, and as far back as Sept. 23, 1837, a writer in the New York
Mirror
was
calling Coosawda, Catawba, Tuscaloosa, Talapoosa
, etc., “softer, more appropriate and more descriptive” than
Johnstown, Jamestown, Millerstown
and the like. I am indebted for the last two references to Dr. Joseph M. Carrière.
2
This monster is reported in Connecticut Past and Present, by Odell Shepard; New York, 1939, p. 100. It is the name of a lake commonly called
Webster
.
3
The process is well described in The Aleut Language, by Richard Henry Geoghegan; Washington, 1944, p. 87.
4
Stewart adds “or something worse.” See Great Skunk Theory Stands Up, Chicago
Tribune
, Sept. 12, 1939, p. 14.
5
A History of the Origin of the Place Names in Nine Northwestern States, before cited, pp. 55–56.
1
“The Americans,” said Robert Southey in The Doctor, CV, 1834–47, “have given all sorts of names, excepting fitting ones, to the places which they have settled or discovered.” “Our country,” said Washington Irving in the
Knickerbocker Magazine
, Aug., 1839, “is deluged with names taken from places in the Old World, and applied to places having no possible affinity or resemblance to their namesakes. This betokens a forlorn poverty of invention, and a second-hand spirit, content to cover its nakedness with the borrowed or cast-off clothes of Europe.” I am indebted here to Dr. Joseph M. Carrière.
2
Place Names, by Jerome C. Hixson,
Words
, Sept., 1936, p. 13.
3
Jan., p. 19.
4
I am indebted here to Mr. L. Clark Keating.
5
A Diary in America, p. 151.
6
In an editorial entitled What’s In a Name? the Boston
Herald
reported on Sept. 3, 1944 that 27
Washingtons
remained. The writer in the
Knickerbocker Magazine
for 1839, just quoted, said that there was then “a county or town of
Washington
in every State and Territory of the Union, except Delaware,” and that in the majority there was both a town and a county. Delaware still lacks a
Washington
, though it has a
Lincoln. Washington
Territory was organized March 2, 1853 and became a State on Nov. 11, 1889.
7
The writer in the
Knickerbocker Magazine
, just quoted, said that there were 257 town-names embodying
New
in the United States in 1839. Today there must be many more. There are also four State names out of forty-eight.
1
Krapp, Vol. I, p. 194.
2
The Classic Nomenclature of Western New York, by Victor H. Paltsits,
Magazine of History
, May, 1911, pp. 246–49.
3
For example, Fitz-Greene Halleck and Joseph Rodman Drake in one of their Croaker Papers in the New York
Evening Post
, June 17, 1819. They assumed that DeWitt was to blame and declared that he had “reared for himself an everlasting monument of pedantry and folly.”
4
Classical Place-Names in America,
American Speech
, April, pp. 261–71.
5
See also Classical Names in New York State, by Edward E. Hale,
American Speech
, Feb., 1928, p. 256; Origin of Classical Place-Names of Central New York, by Charles Marr,
Quarterly Journal of the New York State Historical Association
, July, 1926, pp. 155–67; New York Classical Names Due to Governor Clinton, New York
Times
, Feb. 26, 1928, p. 5, and Classical Place Names in Tennessee, by A. W. McWhorter,
Word-Study
, Nov., 1933, pp. 7 and 8.
1
American Place-Names, by Louis N. Feipel,
American Speech
, Nov., 1925, p. 89. “On a certain railroad in western Iowa,” says Allen Walker Read in Observations on Iowa Place Names,
American Speech
, Oct., 1929, “are three towns at intervals of five miles named
Plover, Mallard
and
Curlew
. The explanation seems to be that the first president of the railroad, Charles E. Whitehead, was a great hunter and had often hunted through the region before the railroad was built.”
2
Observations on Iowa Place Names, just cited, pp. 28–29. The
New Yorker
reported, Feb. 15, 1947, p. 21, that a composer named Ernst Krenek had lately used the names of the stops on the Santa Fe between Albuquerque and Los Angeles as the text for a chorus
a cappella
.
3
How one officer of the Forest Service bestowed scores of names upon natural features of the Wenatchee National Forest in Washington is described at length in Place-Names in the Northwest, by A. H. Sylvester,
American Speech
, Dec., 1943, pp. 241–52.
4
In the
Knickerbocker Magazine
.
1
William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham (1708–78), remained popular in America because of his opposition to Lord North’s harsh treatment of the colonies and his vigorous defense of them in the French and Indian War. This popularity, in 1758, caused the unlovely
Pittsburgh
to be substituted for the charming
Fort Duquesne
.
2
Names of Places, New York
Mirror
, April 15, 1837, p. 335. I am indebted here to Dr. Joseph M. Carrière.
3
See Stewart, pp. 330–32.
4
Strangers in Mississippi Find
Hot Coffee
is Place, Baltimore
Evening Sun
, Oct. 21, 1932.
5
These Texas specimens are from South-western Slang, by Socrates Hyacinth,
Overland Monthly
, Aug., 1869.
6
The last seven come from Newark Library: Books’ Baedeker, Newark
News
, May 23, 1938. Who’s Who in America gives
Waterproof
as the birthplace of Franklin O. Adams, a distinguished architect. Neal O’Hara reported in the Boston
Traveler
, Aug. 12, 1946, that a Louisiana newspaper once made a sensation by printing the headline: Seven
Waterproof
Negroes Drown. I am indebted here to Mr. Alexander Kadison.
7
American Towns Bear Odd Names, New York
Times
, Feb. 7, 1932.
8
A village in Spencer county, not far from the Ohio river. At Christmas time many thousands of American children write to Santa Claus there. When the Postoffice proposed to change its name the Indiana delegation in Congress made loud and effective objection.
1
The last eight are from Titular Tour,
Atlantic Monthly
, Nov., 1934, pp. 639–40.
2
The last thirteen are from U.S. is Full of Odd and Wonderful Names,
Life
, Jan. 31, 1944, p. 57.
3
For the last two I am indebted to Capt. Morris U. Lively, of Norman, Okla.
4
Letters From the West, Containing Sketches of Scenery, Manners and Customs, and Anecdotes Connected With the First Settlements of the Western Sections of the United States; London, 1828. For this I am indebted to An Early Discussion of Place Names, by John T. Flanagan,
American Speech
, April, 1939, pp. 157–59.
5
Long before this there was a
Sodom
in New York State, and it still exists. It is in Warren county.
6
California Gold-Rush English, by Marian Hamilton,
American Speech
, Aug., 1932, p. 425.
1
The Pacific Tourist; New York, 1876.
2
Gouge Eye
, for example, is now
Pleasant Grove
, and
Hell’s Neck
, Mo., has become
Neck City
. I am indebted for the last to Mrs. Vernon A. Rea, of Waygata, Minn.
3
Some of these got their names from old inn signs, as did
Red Lion
in York county,
Broad Axe
and
King of Prussia
in Montgomery,
Rising Sun
in Lehigh, and
Compass
and
White Horse
in Chester. But the origin of
Intercourse
is mysterious, and A. Howry Espenshade does not discuss it in his Pennsylvania Place-Names; State College (Pa.), 1925. The village, which is near Lancaster, does a roaring trade in postcards with passing motorists. Some Western geographical names of an indelicate nature are listed in Nomina Abitera, by W. L. McAtee; Washington, 1945, pp. 3 and 4.
4
The precise date I do not know. The article was reprinted in the New York
Mirror
, Oct. 21. I am indebted here to Dr. Joseph M. Carrière.
1
Report on Uniform System for Spelling Foreign Geographic Names. See Foreign Geographic Names on the Mariner’s Chart, by James B. Hutt, United States Naval Institute Proceedings, Jan., 1946, pp. 39–47. I am indebted here to Rear Admiral G. S. Bryan, U.S.N., ret.
1
Its first report, issued Dec. 31, 1890, was published at the cost of the Smithsonian; its second, May 25, 1891, at that of the Coast and Geodetic Survey; and its third, Aug. 1, 1891, at that of the Lighthouse Board.
2
Say Now, Shibboleth,
Nation’s Business
, Aug., 1943, pp. 76–78.
1
In the earliest records,
c
. 1634,
St. Mary’s
appeared as
St. Maries;
by the end of the Seventeenth Century it had become
St. Mary’s. Prince George’s
was so denominated by an act of the Assembly, 1695, and
Queene Anne’s
by an act of 1706.
2
One of the few exceptions is
Martha’s Vineyard
. Here the apostrophe was saved by vigorous local protests.
3
But not in
Pittsburgh
, where local indignation stayed it.
