Original English Names on the Map of the USA

When there is doubt about translating the name of a given place, it is recommended that a document be found that serves as a primary source. Let us consider American geographical names and their etymology, which may be helpful in their translating.

“There is no part of the world,” said Robert Louis Stevenson, “where nomenclature is so rich, poetical, humorous and picturesque as in the United States of America.” The map of the country is besprinkled with place names from at least half a hundred languages, living and dead. There are Spanish, French and Indian names as melodious and charming as running water; there are names out of the histories and mythologies of all the great races of man; there are names grotesque and names almost sublime. No other country can match those geographical names for interest and variety.

The original English settlers, it would appear, displayed little imagination in naming the new settlements and natural features of the land that they came to. Their almost invariable tendency, at the start, was to make use of names familiar at home, or to invent banal compounds. Plymouth Rock at the North and Jamestown at the South are examples of their poverty of fancy; they filled the narrow tract along the coast with new Bostons, Cambridges, Bristols and Londons, and often used the adjective as a prefix. But this was only in the days of beginning. Once they had begun to move back from the coast and to come into contact with the aborigines and with the widely dispersed settlers of other races, they encountered rivers, mountains, lakes and even towns that bore far more engaging names, and these, after some resistance, they perforce adopted. The native names of such rivers as the James, the York and the Charles succumbed, but those of the Potomac, the Patapsco, the Merrimac and the Penobscot survived, and they were gradually reinforced as the country was penetrated. Most of these Indian names, in getting upon the early maps, suffered somewhat severe simplifications. Potowanmeac was reduced to Potomack and then to Potomac; Unéaukara became Niagara; Reckawackes, by the law of Hobson-Jobson, was turned into Rockaway, and Pentapang into Port Tobacco. But, despite such elisions and transformations, the charm of thousands of them remained, and today they are responsible for much of the characteristic color of American geographical nomenclature. Such names as Tallahassee, Susquehanna, Mississippi, Allegheny, Chicago, Kennebec, Patuxent and Kalamazoo give a barbaric brilliancy to the American map. The settlement of the American continent, once the eastern coast ranges were crossed, proceeded with unparalleled speed, and so the naming of the new rivers, lakes, peaks and valleys, and of the new towns and districts no less, strained the inventiveness of the pioneers. The result is the vast duplication of names. No less than eighteen imitative Bostons and New Bostons still appear, and there are nineteen Bristols, twenty-eight Newports, and twenty-two Londons and New Londons. Argonauts starting out from an older settlement on the coast would take its name with them, and so we find Philadelphias in Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee, Richmonds in Iowa, Kansas and nine other western states, and Princetons in fifteen.

A study of American geographical and place names reveals eight general classes, as follows: a) those embodying personal names, chiefly the surnames of pioneers or of national heroes; b) those transferred from other and older places, either in the eastern states or in Europe; c) Indian names; d) Dutch, Spanish, French, German and Scandinavian names; e) Biblical and mythological names; f) names descriptive of localities; g) names suggested by the local flora, fauna or geology; h) purely fanciful names. The names of the first class are perhaps the most numerous. Some consist of surnames standing alone, as Washington, Cleveland, Bismarck, Lafayette, Taylor and Randolph; others consist of surnames in combination with various old and new words, as Pittsburgh, Knoxville, Bailey’s Switch, Hagerstown, Franklinton, Dodge City, Fort Riley, Wayne Junction and McKeesport; and yet others are contrived of given names, either alone or in combination, as Louisville, St. Paul, Elizabeth, Johnstown, Charlotte, Williamsburg and Marysville. All our great cities are surrounded by grotesque Bensonhursts, Bryn Joneses, Smithvales and Krauswoods. The number of towns in the United States bearing women’s given names is enormous. We find, for example, eleven towns called Charlotte, ten - Ada and no less than nineteen - Alma. Most of these places are small, but there is an Elizabeth with 75,000 populations, an Elmira with 40,000, and an Augusta with nearly 45,000. The names of the second class have the prefix New; more than 600 such towns are recorded, ranging from New Albany to New Windsor. Others bear such prefixes as West, North and South, or various distinguishing affixes, e. g., Bostonia, Pittsburgh Landing, Yorktown and Hartford City.

The tendency to name small American towns after the great capitals of antiquity has excited the derision of the English since the earliest days: sixteen Athenses still remain, and there are yet many Carthages, Uticas, Syracuses, Romes, Alexandrias, Ninevehs and Troys. The third city of the nation, Philadelphia, got its name from the ancient stronghold of Philadelphus of Pergamon. To make up for the falling off of this old and flamboyant custom, the more recent immigrants have brought with them the names of the capitals and other great cities of their fatherlands. Thus the American map bristles with Berlins, Bremens, Hamhurgs, Warsaws and Leipzigs, and is beginning to show Stockholms, Venices, Belgrades and Christianias.

Не нашли, что искали? Воспользуйтесь поиском: