American Language Supplement 2 (118 page)

4
A landing on the Hudson river. Local usage seems to have made it
Jone’s Point
originally, with the apostrophe ahead of the
s
instead of after it. Then it became
Jones-point
. The board prefers
Jones Point
.

5
In the Revolutionary era even worse amalgamations were common. The
Village Record
of Amherst, N. H., used
Newhampshire
, and other papers used
Newbedford, Rhodeisland
and
Newengland
. This madness was followed by the wide use of hyphens,
e.g., New-York
, which was the practise of all the New York papers in the 30s and 40s. I am indebted here to Mr, Charles J. Lovell.

1
The question is discussed at length in First Report on Foreign Geographic Names; Washington, 1932. The American press associations, on April 8, 1944, decided to use native forms in their foreign correspondence in all save 78 cases. These exceptions include
Moscow
instead of
Moskva, Athens
instead of
Athenai
, and
Limerick
instead of
Luimneach
. A full list is in the
Editor and Publisher
, April 15, 1944.

2
The Name
Texarkana
, by M. E. Melton,
American Speech
, Nov., 1926, p. 113.

3
American Speech
, Dec., 1933, p. 80.

1
This is the name, not of a town, but of a whole region – the lower peninsula between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic. There is a
Delmarva News
at Selbysville, Del., and at Wilmington, Del., there is a
Delmarvia Review
. There are
Delmars
in various States far from those here named, but their names seem to be derived from the Spanish term for “by the sea.” I am indebted here to Mr. Donald L. Cherry, of Watsonville, Calif.

2
I take the last two from Two State Towns and Cities, by Miriam Allen deFord,
American Notes & Queries
, Oct., 1945, p. 112.

3
The last two are from
American Notes & Queries
, Sept., 1946, p. 91. Henry J. Heck printed fifty specimens in State Border Place-Names,
American Speech
. Feb., 1028, pp. 186–90. Stewart says, p. 364, that such names “never became popular in the East and Middle West,” but that there are “about sixty” examples in the South and Far West. “The three chief railroads,” he continues, “cross the California line at
Calneva, Calzona
and
Calexico
. Many boundary names also record a location on the line between two counties or near the junction of three.”

4
The Synthetic Place Name in West Virginia,
American Speech
, Feb., 1940, pp. 39–44. See also his West Virginia Place Names; Piedmont (W. Va.), 1945, pp. 57–58.

5
Texas Towns; Terrell (Texas), 1936.

6
Coined Town-Names of North Dakota,
American Speech
, Dec., 1939, p. 315.

1
I borrow the last four from Stewart, p. 363.

2
The last two come from Origins of Utah Place Names, third edition; Salt Lake City, 1940.

3
They are discussed in Some American Place-Name Problems, by George R. Stewart,
American Speech
, Dec., 1944, pp. 289–92. In the same paper he also discusses the common American practise of referring to a county by its proper name only, omitting
county
.

4
American Notes & Queries
, Jan., 1946, p. 155.

5
American Notes & Queries
, Jan., 1946, p. 157. The original name of the village was
Burrell Inn
, but
Berlin
had been adopted for convenience.
Distomo
was a town in Greece, destroyed in the war.

6
U.S. Board on Geographical Names, Decision List No. 4408, Aug., 1944, p. 169. The democratic flavor of the new name will be noted. Stewart says, p. 372, that World War I “left less effect upon the map than the average presidential election of a hundred years earlier.”
Berlin
, Ga., became
Lens
, but reverted to
Berlin
after the war.
Potsdam
, Mo., became
Pershing; Brandenburg
, Texas, became
Old Glory
, and
Kiel
, Calif., became
Loyal
, but
Bismarck
, the capital of North Dakota, kept its name. In Canada
Berlin
, Ont., became
Kitchener
and has so remained.

1
This joint resolution was approved March 15, 1881. It is given in full in The Basis of Correctness in the Pronunciation of Place-Names, by Allen Walker Read,
American Speech
, Feb., 1933, pp. 42–43. It was during the debate on this resolution that one of the legislators loosed a speech that has come down in stag-party humor as “What! Change the name of
Arkansaw?
Never!” A much bowdlerized version of it is in Native American Humor, edited by James R. Aswell; New York, 1947, pp. 359–60.

2
Mr. Charles J. Lovell tells me that The Ohio and Mississippi Pilot; Pittsburgh, 1820, p. 132, says: “The name
Kanzaw
is applied to the country watered by the river
Kanzas
, which should be pronounced
Kanzaw
.” It is spelled
Konza
in the report of Major Stephen H. Long’s journey from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, made in 1819–21. See The Pronunciation of
Arkansas
, by Robert T. Hill,
Science
, Aug. 26, 1887, pp. 107–08.

3
Broadcast English, VI, by A. Lloyd James; London, 1937, p. 22.

4
Dr. James T. Barrs, in a speech before the English Lunch Club at Harvard, Feb. 12, 1944, said: “South Georgians, along with other Southerners, have trouble in pronouncing
Ohio
. They treat the
hi
as if it were
how
, and say
Ohowo
.”

5
This, at all events, was the theory of John Murdoch (1852–1925), librarian of the Smithsonian, and he set it forth tartly in
Science
, Sept. 2, 1887, p. 120.

1
The Ohio town, county and river, not the Florida hellmouth.

2
Harold Wentworth, in his American Dialect Dictionary; New York, 1944, pp. 722–23, prints about 200 examples.

3
Franz Boas says in Geographical Names of the Kwakiutl Indians; New York, 1934, p. 20, that
Missouri
is derived from an Indian term,
m’nisose
, meaning roily water.

4
Pronunciation of the Word
Missouri, American Speech
, Dec., 1933, pp. 22–36. See also The Word
Missouri, Missouri Historical Review
, Oct., 1939, pp. 87–93.

5
Linguistic Change; Chicago, 1917, pp. 79–80.

6
The Pronunciation of Standard English in America; New York, 1919, pp. 80–81.

7
American Pronunciation; ninth edition; Ann Arbor (Mich.), 1945, pp. 168–69.

8
To this effect he quotes the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch
as follows: “
Mizzoura
rolls from the tongue with mellifinous [
sic
] grandeur. It must be spoken with open mouth and erect head. It suggests beauty and greatness.
Mizzoury
 … ends in a piping squeak. A lion’s roar to a peewee’s pipe!… 
Mizzoury
is a pretty name for a nice little school girl, but it will never do for the Queen of the Union.”

9
H. A. Shands says in Some Peculiarities of Speech in Mississippi, 1893, that in that State
Massasip
is “sometimes used by Negroes and illiterate whites for
Mississippi
,” but is apparently unused on higher levels.

10
The use of the diminutive in this case is justified historically, for
Tulsa
was named after an Osage chief named
Tulsey
. I am indebted here to Capt. Morris U. Lively, of Norman, Okla.

1
Read says “perhaps two-thirds.” I incline to think that his estimate is too low.

2
The local preference extends to regions outside Missouri, especially to the southward. When, in 1911, Dr. William A. Read, of Louisiana State University, polled college students in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia on their pronunciation, he found that 162 out of 238 preferred the -
a
-ending and all save one preferred -
zz
- to -
ss
-. See
Dialect Notes
, Vol. II, Part VII, 1911, p. 500.

3
The New International Encyclopedia gives
Pahotcha
or
Pahucha
as the form and says that it meant dusty noses. The Encyclopedia Americana makes it
Palinchas
, of the same meaning.

1
Atlantic Monthly
, April, 1931, p. 62 of Advertising Section. The DAE records
loway
for 1836, 1839 and 1841, but
Iowa
for 1810, 1840 and 1853. The Encyclopedia Americana adds
Ayanways
and
Ajowes
to the early forms of the name. The
lowa
tribe came into what is now
Iowa
from Minnesota. In 1861 it was concentrated on reservations in Kansas and the present Oklahoma.

2
Chicago, 1941.

3
New York, 1946. References to other discussions are in The Basis of Correctness in the Pronunciation of Place-Names, by Allen Walker Read,
American Speech
, Feb., 1933, p. 43.

4
Broadcast English VI, by A. Lloyd James; London, 1937, p. 45.

5
NBC Handbook of Pronunciation; New York, 1943, p. 189.

6
A Desk Book of 25,000 Words Frequently Mispronounced; New York, 1917; p. 561.

1
Harry L. Wells, author of California Names; Los Angeles. His first edition of 1934 gives
Los Ahng-hay-lays
, but in his edition of 1940 he makes it
Ahn-hay-lays
.

2
The Pronunciation of Spanish Place Names in California,
American Speech
, Dec., 1942, p. 241.

3
A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English; Springfield (Mass.), 1944, p. 260. This phonetician seems to have overlooked the fact that Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez, in her Spanish and Indian Place Names of California; San Francisco, 1914, p. 339, had recommended
Loce Ahng-hell-ess
.

4
The full name of
Los Angeles
, in Spanish times, was
El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncúla
. Harry L. Wells, in California Names, before cited, says that
Los Angeles de Porciuncúla
was the name of a shrine of St. Francis Assisi in Italy, and that it was given to the Los Angeles river by Padre Crespi in 1769.
Porciúncula
is Spanish for a small portion or allowance.

5
Private communication, March 21, 1935.

6
A Yankee Comments on Texas Speech,
American Speech
, April, 1945, p. 82. I am also indebted here to Mr. William C. Stewart, of Southbridge, Mass., and to Dr. Josiah Combs, of Fort Worth.

7
Private communication, Dec. 28, 1946.

8
The American Spelling Book; revised impression; Brattleborough (Vt.), 1814, p. v.

1
The Basis of Correctness in the Pronunciation of Place-Names,
American Speech
, Feb., 1933, pp. 42–46.

2
There is an interesting discussion of this question in Broadcast English, II, by A. Lloyd James; London, 1930, pp. 6–10.

3
American Place Names; New York.

1
There is a good account of Schoolcraft in Lost Men of America, by Stewart H. Holbrook; New York, 1946, p. 208. He was an eccentric fellow, and some of the Indian names he listed were actually inventions of his own.

2
Providence, 1861. Parsons (1728–1868) was a Maine man who studied medicine in Boston under the celebrated John Warren and served as a naval surgeon in the War of 1812. At the battle of Lake Erie he was in sole charge of the American wounded. He became professor of anatomy at Brown University in 1823.

3
The Composition of Indian Geographical Names, Illustrated From the Algonkin Languages; Hartford, 1870. Trumbull (1821–97) was a native of Connecticut and a graduate of Yale. He held several public offices, but gave most of his time to the study of the Indian languages. From 1863 until his death he was librarian of the Watkinson Library at Hartford and president of the Connecticut Historical Society. In 1874 he was president of the American Philological Association. He supplied the polyglot quotations used as chapter headings in The Gilded Age, by S. L. Clemens (Mark Twain) and Charles Dudley Warner, 1873.

4
Washington, 1902; second edition, 1905. A volume of 334 pages, listing nearly 9,000 names. Gannett (1846–1914) was a native of Maine and a graduate of Harvard. He became chief geographer of the Geological Survey in 1882 and was one of the original members of the United States Geographic Board. He also published gazetteers of Cuba and Puerto Rico.

1
At its annual meeting in Dec., 1938, the Present-Day English section of the Modern Language Association appointed a committee on place-names and passed a resolution expressing “a strong interest” in the subject, but nothing has been done about it since. See The Place Name Committee,
American Speech
, April, 1939, pp. 136–38.

2
Vol. I, pp. 169–200.

3
Plans For the Study of Missouri Place-Names, Jan., 1928, pp. 237–41.

4
University of Missouri Studies
, Jan. 1, 1934. Ramsay is at work upon an analytical dictionary of his whole material, to be brought if possible into one volume, but when this will be finished is undetermined.

5
The second edition, published by the Oregon Historical Society in 1944, is a volume of 581 pages and lists about 4,000 names. McArthur is secretary of the Oregon Geographical Board and a fellow of the American Geographical Society. He was aided in his long inquiry by Miss Nellie B. Pipes, librarian of the Oregon Historical Society, who is now Mrs. McArthur. The publication of additions to the edition of 1944 was begun in the
Oregon Historical Quarterly
, Dec., 1946.