How do places get their names?
December 10, 2015 4:05 PM Subscribe
I'm thinking both of naming conventions within the U.S. Department of the Interior as well as counties, cities, towns, and streets. Also, how are counties created (and named) as populations grow? Finally, what circumstances would dictate name changes? Thanks.
There are at least three places in Utah, named Molly's Nipple.
Many other names come from original white settlers.
Many other names come from original native peoples.
Often names come from early industries which are named after the first owners.
Sometimes places are named after geological or natural features. Recently Mt. McKinley in Alaska (named after the US president,) was changed to Denali, the original (as far as we know,) Native American name. This was done by executive order, I had not heard it called McKinley in a decade or more.
Some entire counties are named after historical figures, or rivers, or tree types. San Juan County in Utah is named after the San Juan River. Salt Lake County is named after Great Salt Lake. Box Elder County, also in Utah is named after an opportunistic tree. Carbon County is named for the coal industry. Paiute County is named for the Paiute Tribe. Main street is usually the street that had the earliest commercial area. Names get changed to honor those held in high reguard. Often Martin Luther King will have a boulevard, or Caesar Chavez.
You have to come up with a nearly universally acclaimed reason to change an established street name, way so with a county name.
Here and there are some derogatory names, considered so in the current era but casually set down long ago. What do you want to change?
posted by Oyéah at 4:28 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Many other names come from original white settlers.
Many other names come from original native peoples.
Often names come from early industries which are named after the first owners.
Sometimes places are named after geological or natural features. Recently Mt. McKinley in Alaska (named after the US president,) was changed to Denali, the original (as far as we know,) Native American name. This was done by executive order, I had not heard it called McKinley in a decade or more.
Some entire counties are named after historical figures, or rivers, or tree types. San Juan County in Utah is named after the San Juan River. Salt Lake County is named after Great Salt Lake. Box Elder County, also in Utah is named after an opportunistic tree. Carbon County is named for the coal industry. Paiute County is named for the Paiute Tribe. Main street is usually the street that had the earliest commercial area. Names get changed to honor those held in high reguard. Often Martin Luther King will have a boulevard, or Caesar Chavez.
You have to come up with a nearly universally acclaimed reason to change an established street name, way so with a county name.
Here and there are some derogatory names, considered so in the current era but casually set down long ago. What do you want to change?
posted by Oyéah at 4:28 PM on December 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
"Whoever got around to propagating a name first usually wins" is a reasonably valid explanation. The most common reasons I've seen for renaming something that had an established name are:
1) We want to honor something new (JFK, Caesar Chavez) or have new cultural priorities (invaders and social reformers adore giving things a different name)
2) You can't have two of X with the same name (two counties in one state, two townships in one county, two Post Offices)
The things which are easiest to rename are those with generic/numerical titles. It's fairly unusual, in my experience, for a city to keep all of (for instance) First through Tenth Streets as those numbers - JFK and Caesar Chavez and so forth typically get attached to places with those sorts of names.
It's also convenient to rename half a street: everything on the southern half of Main becomes Main (instead of South Main) while the northern half is Neil Armstrong Way.
Usually it's a legislative decision, BTW. City Council or Congress or something. Numbering is done by engineers, but naming requires a vote.
posted by SMPA at 4:56 PM on December 10, 2015
1) We want to honor something new (JFK, Caesar Chavez) or have new cultural priorities (invaders and social reformers adore giving things a different name)
2) You can't have two of X with the same name (two counties in one state, two townships in one county, two Post Offices)
The things which are easiest to rename are those with generic/numerical titles. It's fairly unusual, in my experience, for a city to keep all of (for instance) First through Tenth Streets as those numbers - JFK and Caesar Chavez and so forth typically get attached to places with those sorts of names.
It's also convenient to rename half a street: everything on the southern half of Main becomes Main (instead of South Main) while the northern half is Neil Armstrong Way.
Usually it's a legislative decision, BTW. City Council or Congress or something. Numbering is done by engineers, but naming requires a vote.
posted by SMPA at 4:56 PM on December 10, 2015
I'm not sure if you're only interested in US names but anyone who asks this question might be interested in the book Irish Names of Places by P.W. Joyce. A great read for people interested in place names.
posted by mulcahy at 5:27 PM on December 10, 2015
posted by mulcahy at 5:27 PM on December 10, 2015
P.S. I saw a bit about place naming. There is a very small town in Alaska, called Chicken. The original inhabitants wanted to call it Ptarmigan to honor the Alaska state bird. No one could spell it so they called it Chicken instead.
posted by Oyéah at 7:45 PM on December 10, 2015
posted by Oyéah at 7:45 PM on December 10, 2015
Also, how are counties created (and named) as populations grow?
Generally speaking, counties trend towards remaining as they have been historically. And particularly in the Western US, even counties' historical boundaries often had more to do with physical geography than human settlement patterns. That's not at all to say that changes don't ever happen for whatever local political reason, but there's no specific sense anywhere (to my knowledge) that new counties should be created to accommodate population increases.
posted by threeants at 7:57 PM on December 10, 2015
Generally speaking, counties trend towards remaining as they have been historically. And particularly in the Western US, even counties' historical boundaries often had more to do with physical geography than human settlement patterns. That's not at all to say that changes don't ever happen for whatever local political reason, but there's no specific sense anywhere (to my knowledge) that new counties should be created to accommodate population increases.
posted by threeants at 7:57 PM on December 10, 2015
If you are interested in county creation, you will definitely enjoy this video that shows the changing borders of all counties from 1629 to 2000.
Last year, the residents of Shannon County, SD voted to change their county's name to Oglala Lakota County. You can read the story here.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 8:14 PM on December 10, 2015
Last year, the residents of Shannon County, SD voted to change their county's name to Oglala Lakota County. You can read the story here.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 8:14 PM on December 10, 2015
In Madison, Wisconsin we have a book about Dane County Place Names written by the same guy who spearheaded most of the work on the amazing Dictionary of American Regional English. Needless to say, for a little book it's pretty great.
Most of our downtown streets are named for signers of the Constitution.
I always like to see the imaginary lines between developments created when certain naming schemes run into each other. On the west side we have a neighborhood named after Wisconsin counties (Rock, Kenosha, Trempeleau) that gives way to nautical terms (Anchorage, Frigate, Nautilus) and inventors (Marconi, Tesla).
I know of a few situations in which streets were renamed in "bad areas of town" due to negative associations, giving them something of a fresh start. Simpson Street is now Lake Point Drive. Things have gotten better, but the name change isn't necessarily the reason. Still, I think the residents were fairly involved. (The Simpson Street Free Press youth newspaper kept its name.)
The weirdest thing I saw was the relocation of the Edgewater, which likes to think of itself as the chi-chi hotel in town, after a long and contentious redevelopment process on the same location. The previous address was 666 Wisconsin Avenue -- for the life of me, I can't figure out why they went with it in the first place, but okay. The new address is One Wisconsin Place, which as far as I can tell doesn't exist and never will.
posted by St. Hubbins at 10:19 PM on December 10, 2015
Most of our downtown streets are named for signers of the Constitution.
I always like to see the imaginary lines between developments created when certain naming schemes run into each other. On the west side we have a neighborhood named after Wisconsin counties (Rock, Kenosha, Trempeleau) that gives way to nautical terms (Anchorage, Frigate, Nautilus) and inventors (Marconi, Tesla).
I know of a few situations in which streets were renamed in "bad areas of town" due to negative associations, giving them something of a fresh start. Simpson Street is now Lake Point Drive. Things have gotten better, but the name change isn't necessarily the reason. Still, I think the residents were fairly involved. (The Simpson Street Free Press youth newspaper kept its name.)
The weirdest thing I saw was the relocation of the Edgewater, which likes to think of itself as the chi-chi hotel in town, after a long and contentious redevelopment process on the same location. The previous address was 666 Wisconsin Avenue -- for the life of me, I can't figure out why they went with it in the first place, but okay. The new address is One Wisconsin Place, which as far as I can tell doesn't exist and never will.
posted by St. Hubbins at 10:19 PM on December 10, 2015
Counties are not a federal matter; they're created by the states. A county sheriff is a state peace officer and derives his authority from the state legislature.
(There's a lot of confusion in old westerns about sheriffs versus marshals. Marshals are federal officers, and in a territory before it became a state, marshals were the only law enforcement available. Once a territory was granted statehood and a state government was formed, they proceeded to divide the state into counties and charter sheriffs in those counties, after which usually the marshal would leave.)
Cities are also created by states. The legislature has the ability to revoke a city's charter, too, but it's extremely rare to do that. (It almost happened here in Oregon once, though, to the city of Antelope.) Legislatures can also merge cities and counties, resulting in (for instance) "The City and County of San Francisco".
There are a lot of ways that names get chosen. Here in Oregon, for instance:
Portland was named by a coin toss. Two men named Pettigrove and Lovejoy each wanted to name it after their home town. Pettigrove (from Portland Maine) won the toss over Lovejoy (from Boston).
Astoria is named after John Jacob Astor, owner of The American Fur Company. People working for him created a trading post south of the mouth of the Columbia river, which they named Fort Astoria, and eventually a town formed there and took its name from the fort.
Tillamook is named after an Indian tribe that used to live in that area. (Tillamook County gets its name from the same place.) Multnomah County is named after an Indian village on Sauvies Island which Lewis and Clark saw. Other counties here named after tribes or Indian place names: Clackamas, Clatsop, Coos, Klamath, Yamhill. We also have a lot of counties named after presidents: Jefferson, Jackson, Polk, Grant, Washington.
There's no rule.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:23 PM on December 10, 2015
(There's a lot of confusion in old westerns about sheriffs versus marshals. Marshals are federal officers, and in a territory before it became a state, marshals were the only law enforcement available. Once a territory was granted statehood and a state government was formed, they proceeded to divide the state into counties and charter sheriffs in those counties, after which usually the marshal would leave.)
Cities are also created by states. The legislature has the ability to revoke a city's charter, too, but it's extremely rare to do that. (It almost happened here in Oregon once, though, to the city of Antelope.) Legislatures can also merge cities and counties, resulting in (for instance) "The City and County of San Francisco".
There are a lot of ways that names get chosen. Here in Oregon, for instance:
Portland was named by a coin toss. Two men named Pettigrove and Lovejoy each wanted to name it after their home town. Pettigrove (from Portland Maine) won the toss over Lovejoy (from Boston).
Astoria is named after John Jacob Astor, owner of The American Fur Company. People working for him created a trading post south of the mouth of the Columbia river, which they named Fort Astoria, and eventually a town formed there and took its name from the fort.
Tillamook is named after an Indian tribe that used to live in that area. (Tillamook County gets its name from the same place.) Multnomah County is named after an Indian village on Sauvies Island which Lewis and Clark saw. Other counties here named after tribes or Indian place names: Clackamas, Clatsop, Coos, Klamath, Yamhill. We also have a lot of counties named after presidents: Jefferson, Jackson, Polk, Grant, Washington.
There's no rule.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:23 PM on December 10, 2015
I lived on a street in Ithaca NY that was originally named Snake Road because it was kind of curvy. And maybe there were snakes. But a rich lady who lived there didn't like the name. She lived in a big Tudor-style house and kept peacocks and was kind of an Anglophile. So she petitioned the powers that were, and managed to get the name changed to Devon Road.
posted by beagle at 4:57 AM on December 11, 2015
posted by beagle at 4:57 AM on December 11, 2015
If you want to read a book about place naming in America, you want Names on the Land.
posted by madcaptenor at 5:25 AM on December 11, 2015
posted by madcaptenor at 5:25 AM on December 11, 2015
In American Suburbia, street names in new developments usually follow the whims of the builder. So in my area (the general area including the southwest suburbs of Chicago all the way to Joliet) we have subdivisions where the streets are named for:
Irish place names, and other vaguely Irish-sounding words, like "Emerald"
British streets/neighborhoods/vaguely British-sounding words, like "Royal"
The builder's family members
American presidents
Wildlife (lots of streets with "deer" and "fox" in the name)
Ivy League universities
Also, in Illinois, it's likely that your town will have a street named "Lincoln" or "Prairie".
posted by SuperSquirrel at 6:08 AM on December 11, 2015
Irish place names, and other vaguely Irish-sounding words, like "Emerald"
British streets/neighborhoods/vaguely British-sounding words, like "Royal"
The builder's family members
American presidents
Wildlife (lots of streets with "deer" and "fox" in the name)
Ivy League universities
Also, in Illinois, it's likely that your town will have a street named "Lincoln" or "Prairie".
posted by SuperSquirrel at 6:08 AM on December 11, 2015
You may be interested in this story about how the town of Jay, Florida got its name. (Disclosure: that fellow Nowling is my great-granddaddy.)
posted by JanetLand at 6:33 AM on December 11, 2015
posted by JanetLand at 6:33 AM on December 11, 2015
I'll second what madcaptenor said: Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States (link to publisher's page with description).
posted by mnumberger at 6:45 AM on December 11, 2015
posted by mnumberger at 6:45 AM on December 11, 2015
There's also the Board on Geographic Names in the mix. They don't exactly name things but they appear to make decisions about standardization and such (e.g.: if a given feature is known by multiple names, etc...). They're also apparently the ones with an aversion to possessives, to the point where it's addressed in their FAQs (#18).
posted by mhum at 11:58 AM on December 11, 2015
posted by mhum at 11:58 AM on December 11, 2015
Thirding Names on the Land, which is great and exactly what you want.
Adding Sightseeking by Christopher Lenney, which is about New England placenames and regionalisms.
posted by LobsterMitten at 6:59 AM on December 12, 2015
Adding Sightseeking by Christopher Lenney, which is about New England placenames and regionalisms.
posted by LobsterMitten at 6:59 AM on December 12, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Ms Vegetable at 4:24 PM on December 10, 2015