PHOTO: BETTMANN/CORBIS
put it in a class of its own. And a place-name’s origin can also be quite complex. The dulcet sound of the word “Sioux,” for example, was taught to French traders and trappers by the Dakota and Lakota people. What the white foreigners didn’t know was that the word came from the Sioux’s enemies, the Ojibwas, and meant “adders” or “little snakes.” Consider how such knowledge could change the meaning of a pleasant song like “Sioux City Sue.”
The romantic French name of Coeur d’Alene translates into English literally as “heart of the awl” (the shoemaker’s tool), a term that can be interpreted in different ways. Some historians say that the phrase could mean “sharp hearted,” and that it was the name given by French fur traders to the local tribespeople out of respect for their shrewd trading practices. Others speculate that Coeur d’Alene actually translates as “eye of the needle” and refers to the narrow passage through which Coeur d’Alene Lake empties into the Spokane River. Whatever its origins, the name Coeur d’Alene is another example of the history buried in the names of Ameri- can places.
Origins
Place-names have a utilitarian purpose: they are labels that enable us to distinguish one place from another place. But some places were also named with more artistry than others. Consider the varied moods and impressions evoked by the following names: Red, Vanessa, Crazy Horse, Algernon, Blackie, Jove, Silver City, Riverdale, Canal Street, Loon Lake, Wounded Knee, Zero. A close look at the map of any US state would reveal a wealth of such colorful, eccentric, and fascinating names, doled out by our forefathers to the streams, valleys, meadows, hills, towns, mountains, rivers, and roads found there. Then multiply these thousands of names by fifty and consider that the heroic task of selecting hundreds of thousands of names was for the most part per- formed over the course of one century as men and women swarmed west-
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u This picture shows a fur trader in an Indian council tepee. Contact between French fur traders and native peoples in the northern US led to the founding of settlements with French names, such as Coeur d’Alene in Idaho.
ward across the plains and over the mountains during the 1800s. The broad range of sounds in US place-names and those odd mixtures of consonants and vowels they contain came about because of the number of cultures that made up the growing young country—both the original peoples and the European settlers. This multicultural influence can be seen in the names of US states. Nearly half of the names of US states derive from the names of Indian tribes (Dakota, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming, for example) or from an Indian word (Connecticut, from the Algonquin word for “long river,” or Ohio, the Iroquoian word for “fine river”). Six states have names derived from Spanish words: Colorado, Nevada, Florida, New Mexico, California, and Montana. The first five of these states were once territorial possessions of Spain or Mexico, though the reason why Montana (“mountain”) has a Spanish name is obscure. The story of
PHOTO: JUPITER IMAGES
u Hungry Horse, Montana, was named after two draft horses that were found here a month after they strayed from a logging camp in the winter of 1900.
how California acquired its name is very curious. In 1510, a romance novel called The Adventures of Esplandian was published in Spain. The author of the novel imagined an earthly para- dise “in the Indies,” somewhere to the east of Asia, called California. The idea of this island paradise persisted in European minds, and in 1533, an expedition sent by the conquistador Hernando Cortez landed in what is
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