Where did that name come from?

Being a cartographer, I have an interest in the history of how places got their names. People take names for granted. Someone might live in Oklahoma all their life without any clue as to why it is called Oklahoma. Sometimes place names have fascinating origins. Here are a few:

I live in the United States of America. This name is a rather unwieldy mouthful of words. Where did that come from? There was a minor effort to call our country Columbia. Most people have heard of Christopher Columbus (however you feel about him), fewer have heard of Amerigo Vespucci. But it was Vespucci who led expeditions that first demonstrated that the islands Columbus had found and the larger land mass behind them was not Asia, but was in fact a whole new land. A cartographer of the time decided to call the new continent “America,” after the explorer’s first name (perhaps he thought it sounded better than “Vespuccia”). In any event, the rest of the name just sort of grew with usage. To foster the spirit of unity, people in the colonies started calling themselves the “United Colonies of America.” When the revolutionary war came, they wanted to distance themselves from Brittan so they started referring to themselves as “the United States of America.” This was all done rather informally and independently, but it got such wide-spread usage that when it came time that they actually needed a formal name, it was already an accomplished fact. Poets and lyricists still called the land Columbia. In the early 1800s attempts were made to change the name either to Columbia or to Fredonia. The inertia of the old name resisted change and after 1819 “Columbia” was no longer available, as another country had adopted that name.

I happen to have lived most of my life in Oregon. Oregon is interesting in that the origin of the name has been lost. How can you completely lose the origin of your state’s name? That sounds irresponsible. There are some interesting theories though. Some have suggested that the name came from the French word for storm: Ouragon, or that it was named for an Irishman named O’Regan, or from the kingdom of Aragon. The first recorded usage (or approximate usage) was in 1765 when Major Robert Rogers (of Rogers Rangers fame) petitioned for funds to find the Northwest Passage following the river “called by the Indians Ouragon  . . .” It is suspected that Rogers got this name by looking at a map. There was a rather poor map of the time which showed the Wisconsin River running off the west edge of the map. It was intended to be spelled the way the French did: Ouisconsink, but the map maker misprinted it on the map as Ouariconsint, and since it was crowded, he had to hyphenate the name so it became “Ouaricon” on top and “sink” below, but the hyphen was small and easily missed. A person looking at the map might reasonably assume that there was a river named Ouaricon that ran as far west as you could go. So the most likely origin for the name Oregon is that it was a misspelling of Wisconsin. Go figure.

Of course, that leads one to wonder where the name Wisconsin came from. When Jolliet and Marquette were exploring the Great Lakes region, the crossed over land from Green Bay until they came to a river running west. From their Native American guides, they got the name which was written down as Mescousing or Mesconsing. Eventually the French started spelling it Ouisconsink or ouisconsing, and to the English it became Wisconsin. Whatever the original word was, there is no record of what it meant. It has been speculated that it comes from an Indian word meaning “river running through a red place,” though I think you always have to be skeptical of supposed meanings of Native American words.

Another fascinating (to me) story involves the name of California. There was a popular 16^th Century romance novel called the Deeds of Esplandian which, among other things, told of an island that was peopled by beautiful amazons, the streets were paved with gold etc. much like the tales of El Dorado or Quivira or other mythical places. The supposed queen of this land was Calafia. When one of Cortez’s captains brought back a report about an island west of Mexico that was mostly peopled by women and rich in gold and pearls. Cortez sailed to the “island” and found no amazons nor gold, but somehow (perhaps in jest) the name California became attached to the land. Eventually it was found that this was not an island but a peninsula. The name stuck to the peninsula. Later the part north of the peninsula became Alta California or California Norte. But the part to the north had the best land and got the most settlers so people started calling it just California and the southern part (the original California) became the afterthought and received the name Baja (lower) California.

Things like, this I find interesting. If you do also I encourage you to look up the origin of the name for wherever you live, or anyplace else you fancy. Oh, and by the way, Oklahoma comes from the Choctaw language. “okla” = people, and “homa” = red.

(My novel Star Liner, is now available as an ebook through Copypastapublishing.com, Amazon, or the other usual online sources. For those who like to turn physical pages, the paperback will be out soon). Star Liner