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By Root 2559 0

no people in modern history have been confronted with a larger patch of emptiness to fill with names than those who settled America, or have gone about it in more strikingly diverse ways. According to George R. Stewart, the greatest of American toponymists (that is, one who studies place names), as of 1970 America had probably 3.5 million named places, plus another million or so named places that no longer existed (among them, Purina and Laconia, Washington). There is almost nothing, it would appear, that hasn’t inspired an American place name at some time or other. In addition to breakfast foods and Shakespearean plays, Americans have had towns named for radio programmes (Truth or Consequences, New Mexico), towns named for cowboy stars (Gene Autrey, Oklahoma), towns named for forgotten heroes (Hamtramck, Michigan, named for a Major John Hamtramck), towns that you may give thanks you don’t come from (Toad Suck, Arkansas, and Idiotville, Oregon, spring to mind), at least one town named for a person too modest to leave his name (Modesto, California) and thousands upon thousands of others with more prosaic or boring etymologies (not forgetting Boring, Maryland).

The first colonists, as we noted earlier, were spared the immediate task of giving names to the land since much of the eastern seaboard was named already. But as they spread out and formed new settlements they had to arrive at some system for labelling unfamiliar landmarks and new communities. The most convenient device was to transfer names from England. Thus the older states abound in names that have counterparts across the sea: Boston, Dedham, Braintree, Greenwich, Ipswich, Sudbury, Cambridge and scores of others. An equally simple expedient was to honour members of the royal family, as with Charlestown, Jamestown, Maryland and Carolina. Many of these names, it is worth noting, were pronounced quite differently in the seventeenth century. Charlestown, Massachusetts, was ‘Charlton’. Jamestown was ‘Jimston’ or even ‘Jimson’ – a pronunciation preserved in jimson weed, a poisonous plant found growing there in alarming quantities.2 Greenwich was pronounced ‘grennitch’, but over time came to be pronounced as spelled. Only since about 1925, according to Krapp, has it reverted to the original.3

But the colonists employed a third, rather less obvious, method for place-naming. They borrowed from the Indians. As we know, the native languages of the eastern seaboard were forbiddingly complex and nowhere more so than with their names, yet the colonists showed an extraordinary willingness not only to use Indian names but to record them with some fidelity. Even now the eastern states are scattered with Indian names of arresting density: Anasagunticook, Mattawamkeag, Nesowadnehunk, Nollidewanticook, Nukacongamoc, and Pongowayhaymock, Maine; Youghiogheny and Kishecoquillas, Pennsylvania; Quacumquasit and Cochichewick, Massachusetts; Wappaquasset, Connecticut; Nissequogue, New York.

Once there were many more. Until 1916, New Hampshire had a stream called the Quohquinapassakessamanagnog, but then the cheerless bureaucrats at the Board on Geographic Names in Washington arbitrarily changed it to Beaver Creek. In like fashion the much loved Conamabsqunooncant River was transformed into the succinctly unmemorable Duck.4 The people of Webster, Massachusetts (especially those who sell postcards), continue to take pride in the local body of water named on a signboard as ‘Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg,’ which is said to be Nipmuck for ‘You fish on that side, I’ll fish on this side, and no one will fish in the middle.’ Such is the hypnotic formidableness of its many syllables that the sign painter added an extra one; the gaugg roughly midway along shouldn’t be there. In any case, the name is no longer official. Often, as you might expect, Indian names went through many mutations before settling into their modern forms. Connecticut was variously recorded as Quonectacut, Quonaughticut, Qunnihticut, Conecticot and many others before arriving at a permanent arrangement