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Maybe you just had to be there |
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Unlike the four examples on the right, some place names have origins so simple that discovering them is a letdown. •
Jetson, Kentucky.
• Disco, Michigan. •
Boring, Oregon. • Tuba City,
Arizona. • Bird City,
Kansas. Other men who gave their unusual names to places they help found: • Clement L. Reminder, first mayor of Reminderville, Ohio. • Joseph Finger, founder of Fingerville, SC. • S. T. Sprinkle, pioneer settler of Sprinkle, Texas. • George G. Startup, who managed a lumber company in Startup, Washington. • Jacob Admire, journalist and legislator, whose name resonated with residents of Admire, Kansas. • Thomas Moonlight, for whom Moonlight, Kansas, was named. Neatness counts Poor spelling and illegible handwriting account for several place names. The Post Office mistakenly approved these, but may have had a good excuse. • Arab,
Alabama. • Plad,
Missouri. • Lizemores,
West Virginia. • Divot, Texas. • Correct,
Indiana. A different approach I like the imaginative way these place names were created to honor people. • Awe,
Kentucky. • Helechawa,
Kentucky. • Maljamar,
New Mexico. • Sedalia,
Missouri. Image is everything Names also were selected to impart a certain image of the town. • Security, Colorado, was so named to inspire confidence in home buyers. • Magnet, Nebraska, clearly didn’t work. Residents hoped the name would attract people, like a magnet attracts iron. As of the 2000 census, Magnet had only 79 residents. • Another failure, name-wise, was Fame, Oklahoma. Residents felt their farmlands should be famous. • Sometimes it was done tongue-in-cheek. Some Utah settlers didn't like the freezing cold of Panguitch (elevation 6,700 feet) and moved 25 miles southeast to a place 600 feet lower and often 15-to-20 degrees warmer. They named their new town Tropic. |
Calabash, North Carolina One of the entertainment world's intriguing mysteries during the heyday of radio and the early years of television concerned the identity of Mrs. Calabash. The many millions of people who listened to and later watched comedian Jimmy Durante were teased each week when Durante ended his program by saying, "Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are." Forget the wherever. For Durante's fans, the question about Mrs. Calabash was "Whoever you are?" As I recall, the most popular theory was that Durante was sending a message to a lost love, a woman who had spurned him years ago for some guy named Calabash. Recently I came up another explanation, this one involving this North Carolina town that's just over the border from South Carolina, near that state's popular tourist attraction, Myrtle Beach. According to the brief history provided by epodunk.com on its Calabash, NC, page, the town's name comes from gourds that grew in the area and were used for drinking. The town had seafood restaurants that were popular with the tourists. One of these restaurants was called Coleman's Original Calabash. One of its customers, so the story goes, was Jimmy Durante, who turned Calabash into his most enduring bit. Ann
Arbor, Michigan Either way, Ann Arbor seems unlikely to arouse controversy – except among hair-splitting historians obsessed with inconsistencies that spoil various accounts of how the well-known Michigan city received its unusual name. All agree there were two couples of early settlers – the Allens and the Rumseys. John Allen's wife was named Ann, Elisha Walker Rumsey's wife was Mary Ann, but may have preferred to be called Ann. Both couples moved to Michigan from Virginia. The most popular – and most romantic story – is that soon after the Allens and Rumseys established their new homes, they trained wild grapevines into an arbor where the women often relaxed in an idyllic setting, a sight that moved their husbands to call the place Anns' Arbor. Note the tribute to both women. The men wrote it on a sign they put up in front of the arbor. When the village was born, it took its name from that sign. The apostrophe after Anns soon disappeared. Then so did the S. Nonsense, says another account that claims the village got its name because the first home was built in a beautiful, arbor-like setting, a creation of nature in opening among trees called bur oaks. Supposedly Elisha Rumsey was admiring the scene one day and exclaimed, "What a beautiful arbor we have!" His wife's reply: "Let's call it Ann's Arbor!" Some accept this version, though I suspect Mary Ann Rumsey wasn't the self-aggrandizing type, especially since she supposedly prefaced her suggestion by calling her husband "Mr. Rumsey." A woman so respectful probably wouldn't lay claim to an area. And she couldn't have been referring to her friend Ann because . . . well, historians have discovered that when the Michigan town was named, Ann Allen was still in Virginia. Mary Ann Rumsey arrived in Michigan with the her husband and John Allen in February, 1824. Ann Allen did not arrive until eight months later. The name "Annarbour" was registered with the office of the Register of Deeds in Detroit on May 25th, 1824, almost five months before Ann Allen's arrival. So forget the myth about a name being inspired by the sight of the two Anns relaxing among the wild grapevines, though it's possible Mary Ann Rumsey could have taken some shade under that arbor and been noticed by the men. Assuming, of course, that May 1824 was mild enough to produce early foliage and make the arbor inviting. Smackover, Arkansas It may be just my opinion, but I think spokespersons for various communities slightly revise local history before dispensing it to curious outsiders. The latest story about Smackover, if I can judge from A Place Called Peculiar, is that the town was settled in 1844 by French trappers who named the place Sumac-Couvert (soo-MACK-coo-VAIR), which means "covered with sumac bushes." To English settlers who followed, the name sounded like . . . well, you know. I don't for a minute believe this account. It seems adjusted to make it easier for people today to grasp the confusion a French name might have had on later pioneers, most of whom probably spoke English. An older, more convincing Smackover story claims the town was named for the river. This makes sense because those French trappers almost certainly traveled by boat and considered waterways as their roads. Anyway, according to this story, trappers found a river they called chemin couvert (shmin coo-vair), meaning "covered road," the cover being provided by tree branches that overarched the water. I can imagine settlers who followed the trappers heard the name as Shmink Ovair, and took it from there. It wasn't long before a map indicated the river's name was Smack overt, which has some historians reconsidering whether the original name might have been Chemin overt, or "open road," which I have to dismiss because it turns the whole story upside down. No, the second c in the original French name is the key. It sets up the sound that turned Chemin couvert into what it soon became, especially if you imagine it being said by an obnoxious Frenchman, disdainful of you, a settler-come-lately. You'd probably want to smack him. Savannah, Georgia There are several theories, my favorite being one that almost certainly was made up after the fact and sounds as though it could have come from the routine of a 19th century stand-up comic. All agree the city was named for the river. The river could have come from the Spanish word sabana ("flat lands" or "plains") because of the area along the banks of the river, though there's no mention of just where along the river the explorers may have decided upon a name. That's one of the problems with these stories. Another is the passage of time. There's little to indicate that someone standing on the banks of this river, particularly near the city that bears its name, would be seeing a savanna. Kenneth K. Krakow, whose Georgia Place Names: Their History and Origins (Winship Press) can be read online, says the name also might have come from an Americanized spelling of a Native American word shawano ("the southerners"). Another possibility, he says, was that the name came from a Creek Indian corruption of the word Shawnee, a rival tribe who lived for many years along the river. It's not in the book, but Krakow did pass along another story to a newspaper columnist. This folk tale says the river name stems from an incident in which young girl was rescued from drowning after a boy yelled, "Save Anna!" In a weird sort of way it's this story that makes the most sense. |
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