Made In America - Bill Bryson [75]
Debates over state names often dragged on for days and never failed to inflame passions. Among the names suggested for Colorado were Colona (a rather odd feminization of the Spanish for Columbus, Colón), Jefferson, Franklin, Jackson, Lafayette, Yampa, San Juan, Lula, Arapahoe, Tahosa and Idaho. Idaho had a strange and almost mystical popularity among some Congressmen. Despite having no meaning whatever, it was suggested over and over again for thirty-one years until it was finally adopted for the forty-third state in 1890. Once it was out of the way, other names took its place in the line-up of hopefuls. Among those considered for Arizona were Gadsonia – after James Gadsden of Gadsden Purchase fame – and Pimeria. For New Mexico the suggestions included Hamilton, Lincoln, Montezuma and Acoma (after a local Indian tribe).
Even more improbable in their way are state nicknames. Considering how widely used these nicknames are, it is surprising that their origins are often nowadays a mystery. No one knows for sure why Iowans are called Hawkeyes, why North Carolinians are Tarheels, why Kansans are Jayhawkers (there is no such bird) or why Indianans are Hoosiers. We know that Delaware has been called the Blue Hen State since at least 1840, but we don’t know why. Various, sometimes ingenious explanations have been adduced – someone, for instance, traced hoosier to a Cumberland dialect word, hooser – but the evidence in each case is at best inconclusive and often merely fanciful.27
Most states have a discarded nickname somewhere in their past. Arkansas has been called the Hot Water State and the Toothpick State, Georgia the Buzzard State, Goober State and Cracker State. (The cracker in Georgia cracker has nothing to do with crisp baked wafers. It comes from the practice of cracking corn to make cornmeal.) Missouri was once widely known as the Puke State, Illinois as the Sucker State and Montana as the Stub-Toe State though again in each case no one seems to know why. We do know, however, the derivation of Missouri’s current slogan, the Show Me State. The expression was coined as an insult by outsiders and was meant to suggest that Missourians were so stupid that they had to be shown how to do everything. The state’s inhabitants, however, contrarily took it as a compliment, persuading themselves that it implied a certain shrewd caution on their part.
As you might expect, state legislatures from time to time come up with more flattering nicknames for themselves, even at the risk of seeming a shade overambitious. New Jersey for a time called itself the Switzerland of America while Arkansas opted for the Wonder State. New Mexico appears to have suffered from the most severe outbreak of narcissism, calling itself at various times the Land of Heart’s Desire, the Land of Opportunity, the Land of the Delight Makers and the Land of Enchantment.
For the honour of nickname least likely to make you pack up your bags and head on out, there has been no shortage of contenders. Among the perennial front runners in this category we find the Tree Planters State (Indiana), the Wheat State (Kansas), the Blizzard State (South Dakota), the Hog and Hominy State (Tennessee), the Iodine State (South Carolina), the Mosquito State (New Jersey) and the apt if resplendently self-evident Land of the Dakotas (North Dakota).
II
And so, more briefly, to personal names. One of the more striking features of life in the early colonial period is how casual people were with the spellings of their names. Shakespeare, as is commonly noted, never spelled his name the same way twice in any of his surviving six signatures, even employing two spellings on a single document. His contemporaries were even more approximate in their renderings, leaving us with eighty-three different spellings of his name. Curiously, the one spelling