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Names on the Land |
| Section: LIFE / PASTIMES |
| Author: Gregory McNamee |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 12/1/1992 |
| Size: 2,427 Words, 15,050 Characters |
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"Language," the philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Is fossil poetry." In the same spirit, place-names are fossil history. Moments of the past frozen in time. The names that dot the map of the United States--at last count they number more than three million--reveal much about the nation's development. They record forgotten episodes, commemorate passing moments and great events alike, and chronicle the movement of peoples and generation over hundreds, even thousands of years.
Our oldest place-names are, of course, American Indian in origin--as foreign visitors note when puzzling out pronunciations, trying to make linguistic sense out of words like Mattapoiset, Passamaquody, and Tukanikavits; no mainland state lacks such names, which long precede the Europeans' arriva...
. . .
...dded to the map. The only restriction are that place-names, like postage stamps, cannot be issued in honor of living persons, and they cannot be obscene or otherwise offensive.
For my part, I'm headed out the door to look for a suitable peak that, with luck, I can persuade the authorities to dub Mount Grouch. Look for it in an upcoming atlas, somewhere on the Arizona-New Mexico line. vbcrlf
(806 of 15,050 characters)
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