American Language Supplement 2 (127 page)

California was called the
Gold State
by the Hon. Amelia M.
Murray in her “Letters From the United States, Cuba and Canada” in 1855,
¹
but the DAE shows that by 1867 this had become the
Golden State
. The State did not appear at all on the
Brother Jonathan
list of 1843, for that was five years before the discovery of gold on Sutter’s ranch. It has, in late years, got much more glory and money out of its oil wells, orchards, vineyards, truck farms and movie lots than it has got out of its gold-mines, but the glamour of 1849 survives, probably helped by the suggestion in that most romantic of geographical names,
Golden Gate
. In 1849
El Dorado
came into use as a nickname for California,
²
but it was by no means new, and had been applied previously to various other regions promising fabulous riches. Shankle also records
Grape State
and
Eureka State
, the latter borrowed from the motto on the state seal,
³
but neither seems to have ever had much vogue. Schele de Vere adds
Bear State
, also claimed by Arkansas, and explains that the California bear is a grizzly.

Colorado is usually called the
Centennial State
, for it was admitted to the Union in 1876. The DAE’s first example of the use of the term is dated 1878. There was a time when it was often called the
Silver State
, but this designation was disputed by Nevada so long ago as 1871. It has also been called the
Switzerland of America
, which is challenged, as I have already noted, by Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey and West Virginia, and the
Treasure State
, which is disputed by Montana. Shankle lists, in addition,
Lead State
and
Buffalo Plains State
, neither of which is recorded by the DAE.

The most common designations for Florida are
Everglade State
and
Peninsula State
, though it has had a number of others. The latter is favored by the
World
Almanac, 1947, which apparently reflects a local preference. The DAE offers no example of
Everglade State
dated earlier than 1893, but it must be considerably older. It gives no example at all of
Peninsula State
, nor of
Alligator State
,
nor of
Flower State
, nor of
Orange State
, nor of
Land of Flowers
, all of them noted by Shankle as in occasional use. He also adds
Gulf State
, but this would hardly be a recognizable designation of Florida, for it is applied in the plural to all the States bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, to wit, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. The boosters who swarm in Florida have made diligent efforts to devise a nickname connecting it with the Fountain of Eternal Youth which Juan Ponce de León sought there in 1513, but so far without success. Ponce de León returned for a second search in 1521, and was killed by the Indians. Florida entered the Union in 1845, soon after the second Seminole War of 1835–42, but it seems to have escaped, somehow, being called the
Seminole State
. It was listed as the
Shell State
by the Hon. Amelia M. Murray in 1856, but this designation apparently never had any vogue.

Idaho prefers to be called the
Gem of the Mountains
, or the
Gem State
, but
Little Ida
has also been recorded.
¹
The DAE overlooks all of them, but the
World
Almanac gives
Gem State
. Illinois has had many nicknames in the past,
e.g., Garden of the West, Corn State
and
Prairie State
, but
Sucker State
seems to be the only one surviving. The DAE traces
Sucker
for an Illinoisan to 1835, and the
World
Almanac still lists
Sucker State
.
²
The origin of
Sucker
is not established, though all the earlíer authorities seem to have derived it from the name of a fresh-water fish of the
Catostomus
genus, related to the catfish and plentiful in the Western rivers. This fish swam up the rivers in the Spring and returned in the Autumn. When the lead mines at Galena, in the far northern part of the State, were opened in the 1820s, they were manned largely by itinerants from the southward, who came up the river with the fish and returned with them. Thornton gives this as the origin of the name on the authority of Charles Fenno Hoffman, who visited the region in 1833–34.
³
But Schele de Vere quotes the Providence
Journal
of some unnamed date before 1872 to the effect that the nickname originated in the fact that the pioneers, in dry seasons, would suck up water from crawfish holes through reeds. By the
1830s
sucker
had become a common term in the Western country for a gull or easy mark, and it has since got into almost universal American use. In the form of
gone sucker
the DAE traces it to 1832. The name of
sucker
for the fish is recorded in 1753 in the British Isles and in 1772 in this country. The DAE traces
Prairie State
for Illinois to 1857. It had been in use before that, in the plural, as a general designation for all the States in the plains area, from Indiana in the east to Kansas and Texas in the west. A writer in the
Atlantic Monthly
for March, 1867 quoted by the DAE, even included Missouri, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Egypt
has long been the common designation for the region of deep black soil in the southern part of Illinois, surrounding Cairo, where the Ohio river enters the Mississippi. Thornton says maliciously that the name was applied to it “with reference to the supposed intellectual darkness of the inhabitants” and quotes the Oregon
Argus
for September 8, 1860, as alleging that the majority of its people were then “exceedingly illiterate,” but a contributor to the Editor’s Drawer of
Harper’s Magazine
in 1858
¹
offered the following far more flattering etymology:

Indiana is listed in all the reference books as the
Hoosier State
, and seems to have no other nickname. The DAE’s first example of
Hoosier
is dated 1832 and comes from a pioneer paper called the
Indiana Democrat
. The month and day are not given,
but the Indiana historian, Jacob Piatt Dunn, has shown that the precise date was January 3, 1832, when the term appeared in a set of verse supposed to be addressed to the readers of the paper by its carrier-boys – in the hope, apparently, of inducing them to give liberal New Year’s presents. Here it was spelled
Hoosier
, as now, and on April 4, 1832 it so appeared again in a news item in the
Northwestern Pioneer and St. Joseph’s Intelligencer
of South Bend.
¹
When, in 1866, an aged Indiana poetaster named John Finley printed in Cincinnati a volume called “The
Hoosier’s
Nest” he made the claim in a footnote that his title poem was written in 1830. Whether or not this was true cannot be ascertained today, but Dunn
²
has demonstrated that no record of the publication of the verses can be found before January 1, 1833, when they appeared in the Indianapolis
Journal
as a similar New Year’s greeting from carrier-boys to readers. When Finley assembled and copyrighted his book in 1865, says Dunn, he “used his privilege of revising his work, and while he may have improved his poetry he seriously marred its historical value.”
³
In both versions he described the
Hoosier nest
of his title as “a buckeye cabin,” possibly meaning a log-cabin made of logs from the Ohio buckeye (
Aesculus glabra
), said by Eva W. Brodhead to rot at one end and sprout at the other.
⁴
In the Indianapolis
Journal
version
Hoosier
was used in the title, but thereafter
Hoosher
occurred seven times, and
Hoosheroon
, signifying an Indian child, once.
⁵
In his book Finley used
Hoosier
only. It appeared four times in his somewhat shortened
version of “The
Hoosier’s
Nest” of 1833, and also in several other poems in the collection.

Its etymology has been much disputed and remains in doubt. Thornton, in his “American Glossary,” called attention to the fact that
whoosher
was listed in a dictionary of 1659 and defined there as “a rocker, a stiller, a luller, a dandler of children asleep,” but there was obviously no connection between this
whoosher
and
Hoosier
. The earlier American etymologists all sought to connect the term with some idea of ruffianism, and evidence was adduced that it was first applied to backwoodsmen in general, not only to Indianans. Said the Hon. Jere Smith, an aged resident of Winchester, Ind., in a speech reported by the Indianapolis
Journal
on January 20, 1860:

In 1838, in the first edition of his “Dictionary of Americanisms,” John Russell Bartlett gave the following account of the term by “a correspondent of the Providence
Journal
”:

To the second of these etymologies Schele de Vere added the following variorium version in 1872, quoting “America by River and by Rail, or, Notes by the Way in the New World,” by William Ferguson:
¹

Dunn rejects both etymologies. “Nobody,” he says,
²
“has ever produced any evidence of the use of the word
husher
as here indicated,… and there is no greater evidence of the use of the expression ‘Who’s yere?’ when approaching a house. As a matter of fact, the common custom when coming to a house and desiring communication with the residents was to call ‘Hallo the house!’ ” Dunn then rehearses an equally improbable etymology that was circulated on the authority of “the Rev. Aaron Wood, the pioneer preacher,” as follows:

But this is folk-etymology at its worst, and Dunn disposes of it without difficulty. Only one of his points needs noting – that it is impossible to imagine a Polish officer mispronouncing the word
hussar
. Dunn ascribes another incredible derivation of the term to James Whitcomb Riley, the poet, as follows: