American Language (103 page)

The names of the second class we have already briefly observed. They are betrayed in many cases by the prefix
New
; more than 600 such postoffices are recorded, ranging from
New Albany
to
New Windsor
. Others bear such prefixes as
West, North
and
South
, or various distinguishing affixes,
e.g., Bostonia, Pittsburgh Landing, Yorktown
and
Hartford City
. One often finds Eastern county names applied to Western towns and Eastern town names applied to Western
rivers and mountains. Thus,
Cambria
, which is the name of a county but not of a postoffice in Pennsylvania, is a town in seven Western States;
Baltimore
is the name of a glacier in Alaska, and
Princeton
is the name of a peak in Colorado. In the same way the names of the more easterly States often reappear in the West,
e.g.
, in
Mount Ohio
, Colo.,
Delaware
, Okla., and
Virginia City
, Nev. The tendency to name small American towns after the great capitals of antiquity has excited the derision of the English since the earliest days; there is scarcely an English book upon the States without some fling at it. Of late it has fallen into abeyance, though sixteen
Athenses
still remain, and there are yet many
Carthages, Uticas, Spartas, Syracuses, Romes, Alexandrias, Ninevehs
and
Troys
.
¹⁴³
The third city of the nation,
Philadelphia
, got its name from the ancient stronghold of Philadelphus of Pergamon. To make up for the falling off of this old and flamboyant custom, the more recent immigrants brought with them the names of the capitals and other great cities of their fatherlands. Thus the American map now bristles with
Berlins, Bremens, Hamburgs, Warsaws
and
Leipzigs
, and also shows
Stock-holms, Venices, Belgrades
and
Christianias
.
¹⁴⁴

The influence of Indian names upon American nomenclature is obvious. No fewer than twenty-six of the States have names borrowed from the aborigines,
¹⁴⁵
and the same thing is true of large numbers
of towns and counties. The second city of the country bears one, and so do the largest American river, and the greatest American water-fall, and four of the five Great Lakes, and the scene of the most important military decision ever reached on American soil. “In a list of 1,885 lakes and ponds of the United States,” says Louis N. Feipel,
¹⁴⁶
“285 are still found to have Indian names; and more than a thousand rivers and streams have names derived from Indian words.” Walt Whitman was so earnestly in favor of these Indian names that he proposed substituting them for all other place-names, even the oldest and most hallowed. “California,” he said in “An American Primer,”
¹⁴⁷
“is sown thick with the names of all the little and big saints. Chase them away and substitute aboriginal names.… Among names to be revolutionized: that of the city of
Baltimore
.… The name of
Niagara
should be substituted for the
St. Lawrence
. Among places that stand in need of fresh, appropriate names are the great cities of
St. Louis, New Orleans, St. Paul.
” But eloquent argument has also been offered on the other side, chiefly on the ground that Indian names are often hard to pronounce and even harder to spell. In 1863 R. H. Newell (Orpheus C. Kerr), a popular humorist of the time, satirized the more difficult of them in a poem called “The American Traveler,” beginning:

I can find neither of these names in the latest report of the Geographic Board, but there are still towns in Maine called
Anasagunti-cook, Mattawamkeag, Oquossoc
and
Wytopitlock
, and lakes called
Unsuntabunt
and
Mattagomonsis
. But many Indian names began to disappear in colonial days. Thus the early Virginians changed the name of the
Powhatan
to the
James
, and the first settlers in New
York changed the name of
Horicon
to
Lake George
. In the same way the present name of the
White
Mountains displaced
Agiochook
; and
New Amsterdam
(1626), and later
New York
(1664), displaced
Manhattan
, which survived, however, as the name of the island, and was revived in 1898 as the name of a borough. In our own time
Mt. Rainier
has displaced
Tacoma
(or
Tahoma
).
¹⁴⁹
By various linguistic devices changes have been made in other Indian names. Thus,
Mau-wauwaming
became
Wyoming, Maucwachoong
became
Mauch Chunk, Ouemessourit
became
Missouri, Nibthaska
became
Nebraska, Rarenawok
became
Roanoke, Asingsing
became
Sing-Sing
, and
Machihiganing
became
Michigan
.

The Dutch place-names of the United States are chiefly confined to the vicinity of New York, and a good many of them have become greatly corrupted.
Brooklyn, Wallabout
and
Gramercy
offer examples. The first-named was originally
Breuckelen
, the second was
Waale Bobht
, and the third was
De Kromme Zee. Hell-Gate
is a crude translation of the Dutch
Helle-Gat
. During the early part of the last century the more delicate New Yorkers transformed the term into
Hurlgate
, but the change was vigorously opposed by Washington Irving, and
Hell-Gate
was revived. The Dutch
hoek
was early translated into the English
hook
, and as such is found in various place-names,
e.g., Kinderhook
, Sandy
Hook
, Corlaers’s
Hook
and
Hook
Mountain. The Dutch
kill
, meaning channel, is in
Kill
van Kull,
Peekskill, Catskill
and
Schuylkill. Dorp
(village) is in New
Dorp.
¹⁵⁰
Kloof
(valley, ravine) survives, in the Catskills, in Kaatersill
Clove
, North
Clove
and
Clove
Valley.
Bosch
(corrupted to
bush), wijk
(corrupted to
wick
) and
vlei
(usually written
vly
or
fly
) are also occasionally encountered. The first means a wood, the second a district, and the third either a valley or a plain. Very familiar Dutch place-names are
Harlem, Staten, Flushing
(from
Vlissingen), Cortlandt,
Nassau, Coenties, Spuyten Duyvel, Yonkers, Barnegat
and
Bowery
(from
bouwerij
, a farmstead).
Block
Island was originally
Blok
, and Cape
May
, according to Scheie de Vere, was
Mey
. The French place-names have suffered even more severely than the Dutch. Few persons would recognize
Smackover
, the name of a small town in Arkansas, as French, and yet in its original form it was
Chemin Couvert
. Schele de Vere, in 1871, recorded the degeneration of the name to
Smack Cover
; the Postoffice, always eager to shorten and simplify names, has since made one word of it and got rid of the redundant
c
. In the same way
Bob Ruly, a
Michigan name, descends from
Bois Brulé; Glazypool
, the name of an Arkansas mountain, from
Glaise à Paul; Low Freight
, the name of an Arkansas river, from
L’Eau Frais; Loose
creek, in Missouri, from
L’ours; Swashing
creek from
San Joachim; Baraboo
, in Wisconsin, from
Baribault; Picketwire
, in Arkansas, from
Purgatoire
; and
Funny Louis
, in Louisiana, from
Funneleur
. A large number of French place-names,
e.g., Lac Supérieur
, were translated into English at an early day, and nearly all the original
Bellevues
are now
Belleviews
or
Bellviews. Belair
, La., represents the end-product of a process of decay which began with
Belle Aire
, and then proceeded to
Bellaire
and
Bellair
. All these forms are still to be found, together with
Bel Air
and
Belle Ayr
. The Geographic Board’s antipathy to names of more than one word has converted
La Cygne
in Kansas, to
Lacygne. Lamoine, Labelle, Lagrange
and
Lamonte
are among its other improvements, but
Lafayette
for
La Fayette
, long antedated the beginning of its labors.
¹⁵¹
Sheer ignorance has often been responsible for
the debasement of French place-names. Consider, for example, the case of
Grande Ronde
. It is the name of a valley and a river in Eastern Oregon, and it used to be the name of a town in Yamhill county. But then a big lumber company came along, enlarged the town-site, put a mortgage on it, and issued bonds against it. On these bonds, as in the incorporation papers of the company, the name was spelled
Grand Ronde
. The Oregon Geographic Board protested, but when it was discovered that rectifying the blunder would cost many hundreds of dollars, the lumber company refused to move, and so the place is now
Grand Ronde
— in French, a sort of linguistic hermaphrodite.
¹⁵²

According to Harold W. Bentley
¹⁵³
no less than 2000 American cities and towns have Spanish names, and thousands more are borne by rivers, mountains, valleys and other geographical entities. He says that there are more than 400 cities and towns of Spanish name in California alone. They are numerous all over the rest of the trans-Mississippi region, and, curiously enough, are even rather common in the East. The Mexican War was responsible for many of the Eastern examples, but others
e.g., Alhambra, Altamont
and
Eldorado
, seem to reveal nothing more than a fondness for mellifluous names. The map of California is studded with lovely specimens:
Santa Margarita, San Anselmo, Alamagordo, Terra Amarilla, Sabinoso, Las Palomas, Ensenada, San Patricio, Bernalillo
, and so on. Unfortunately, they are intermingled with horrifying Anglo-Saxon inventions,
e.g., Oakhurst, Ben Hur, Drytown, Skidoo, Susanville, Uno
and
Ono
, including harsh bastard forms,
e.g., Sierraville, Hermosa Beach, Point Loma
and
Casitas Springs
. Many names originally Spanish have been translated,
e.g., Rio de los Santos Reyes
into
Kings
river, and
Rio de las Plumas
into
Feather
river, or mauled by crude attempts to turn them into something more “American,”
e.g., Elsinore
in place of
El Señor
, and
Monte Vista
in place of
Vista del Monte
. Probably a fifth of the Spanish place-names in California are the names of saints. The names of the Jewish patriarchs and those of the holy places of
Palestine are seldom, if ever, encountered: the Christianity of the early Spaniards seems to have concerned itself with the New Testament far more than with the Old, and with Catholic doctrine even more than with the New Testament. There are no
Canaans
or rivers
Jordan
in the Southwest, but
Concepcions, Sacramentos
and
Trini-dads
are not hard to find.

The Americans who ousted the Spaniards were intimately familiar with both books of the Bible, and one finds copious proofs of it on the map of the United States. There are no less than eleven
Beulahs
, nine
Canaans
, eleven
Jordans
and twenty-one
Sharons. Adam
is sponsor for a town in West Virginia and an island in the Chesapeake, and
Eve
for a village in Kentucky. There are five postoffices named
Aaron
, two named
Abraham
, two named
Job
, and a town and a lake named
Moses
. Most of the
St. Pauls
and
St. Josephs
of the country were inherited from the French, but the two
St. Patricks
show a later influence. Eight
Wesleys
and
Wesleyvilles
, eight
Asburys
and twelve names embodying
Luther
indicate the general theological trend of the plain people. There is a village in Maryland, too small to have a postoffice, named
Gott
, and I find
Gotts Island
in Maine (in the French days,
Petite Plaisance
) and
Gottville
in California, but no doubt these were named after German settlers of that awful name, and not after the Lord God directly. There are four
Trinities
, to say nothing of the inherited
Trinidads
. And in Arkansas and New York there are
Sodoms
.

Names wholly or partly descriptive of localities are very numerous throughout the country, and among the
Grundworter
embödied in them are terms highly characteristic of American and almost unknown to the English vocabulary.
Bald Knob
would puzzle an Englishman, but the name is so common in the United States that the Geographic Board has had to take measures against it. Others of that sort are
Council Bluffs, Patapsco Neck, Delaware Water Gap
,
¹⁵⁴
Walden Pond, Sandy Hook, Key West, Bull Run, Portage, French Lick, Jones Gulch, Watkins Gully, Cedar Bayou, Keams Canyon, Poker Flat, Parker Notch, Sucker Branch, Frazier’s Bottom
and
Eagle Pass. Butte Creek
, in Montana, a small inland stream, bears a name made up of two Americanisms. There are thirty-five postoffices
whose names embody the word
prairie
, several of them,
e.g., Prairie du Chien
, Wis., inherited from the French. There are seven
Divides
, eight
Buttes
, eight town-names embodying the word
burnt
, innumerable names embodying
grove, barren, plain, fork, cove
and
ferry
, and a great swarm of
Cold Springs, Coldwaters, Summits, Middletowns
and
Highlands
. The flora and fauna of the land are enormously represented. There are twenty-two
Buffalos
beside the city in New York, and scores of
Buffalo Creeks, Ridges, Springs
and
Wallows
. The
Elks
, in various forms, are still more numerous, and there are dozens of towns, mountains, lakes, creeks and country districts named after the
beaver, martin, coyote, moose
and
otter
, and as many more named after such characteristic flora as the
paw-paw
, the
sycamore
, the
cottonwood
, the
locust
and the
sunflower
. There is an
Alligator
in Mississippi, a
Crawfish
in Kentucky and a
Rat Lake
on the Canadian border of Minnesota. The endless search for mineral wealth has besprinkled the map with such names as
Bromide, Oil City, Anthracite, Chrome, Chloride, Coal Run, Goldfield, Telluride, Leadville
and
Cement
.