Do you ever wish your city kept its original name?
 

This could be a fun and informative exercise.

Do you ever wish your city kept its original name? Or had a different name for one reason or another? Is New Amsterdam a cooler name than New York? Maybe. Atlanta an improvement over Terminus? I think so.

Does your city have an original name that you'd prefer it be named?


I'll go first with my hometown and two cities of residence:


Erie, PA

Erie... cool meaning, translating as "people of the cat"... but yeah, not really a great name. Named after the Great Lake, which was named after the Erie or Erielhonan people who inhabited the southern shore of Lake Erie before being massacred by/absorbed into the Iroquois. So that's all good, but the word "eerie" is obviously going to be associated (and perhaps it is fitting as Erie is the weirdo of Pennsylvania). Just not a great sounding name.

However, the original settlement around the French fort of the same name, Presque Isle, has a nice ring to it. Meaning "almost an island" in French, referring to the peninsula stretching out into the lake, creating the bay and harbor which made the place good for a settlement.

Presque Isle, Pennsylvania... sounds like place I'd want to visit much more so than "dreary Erie".

Pittsburgh, PA

Nothing too cool about the name's origin... named for British statesman William Pitt, First Earl of Chatham. Early Scottish pronunciation style of Pittsborough (Pitts-burrah), owing to being named by British general Scotsman John Forbes. The original European name, Duquesne, just has a more sophisticated and interesting sound to it. Meaning "of the oak" in French, was also the name of the French fort at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers.

But of course, the English had to make it something that rhymes with shit... Shittsburgh. Pittsburgh... the pits are not where one wants to be... doesn't match the beauty of the city. But Duquesne, Pennsylvania... a certain elegance there.

Miami, FL

I like it as is. Miami is a cool sounding name. Fun to say. Rolls off the tongue and lips. Named for the original name of Lake Okeechobee, the river draining it into Biscayne Bay, and the Mayaimi people who inhabited the area south it.

Originally the site of Fort Dallas. Name already taken.

considering the fact that "Fort Dearborn" is the only other possible name that Chicago might have assumed in the past, i'll say no.

"Fort X" city names are pretty bland and generic, and even if it had been truncated to just "Dearborn", that would have been dumb too.

"Chicago" is a wonderful and unique name. It doesn't get confused for any other place on the planet. And it's by far the largest city in the US with a native american-derived name ("shikakwa" meaning smelly onions).

so yeah, "Chicago" is a keeper of a name. I'm glad "Fort Dearborn" was left in the history books.

Stonewall? Yeah probably!

Phoenix is a weird name. Stonewall named after the wildly interesting Civil War General would be cool. current culturally melodramatic issues with it right now notwithstanding.

Before that the region was referred to as "Pima Villages" which of course was just the small and scattered native farming communities and families in the river basin where Phoenix now sits.

And before that I suppose it was some Hohokam name lost to history.

According to Wikipedia, "Yanaguana was the Payaya people village in the geographical area that became the Bexar County city of San Antonio, Texas." I think I'm going to start calling it Yanaguana.

Also according to Wikipedia, Houston is on land that was home to the "Karankawa and the Atakapa indigenous peoples for at least 2,000 years before the first known settlers arrived." The exact area of Houston, swampland filled with snakes and alligators and infested with mosquitos and where malaria and yellow fever awaited anyone who ventured in, remained understandably uninhabited until two con artists from New York decided it was a good place to pull off a real estate scam.

I don't think Flagstaff had any prior names? It got its namesake from an expedition to San Francisco constructing a flag pole to celebrate the United State's centennial.

Cincinnati used to be Losantaville and Fort Washington. Not sure if either would be an improvement?

Or you could have kept the French spelling "Chécagou".

In terms of originality, I've always found interesting that there is an Alaskan island named Chicagof but there is no link between the two names.

you know that's not how us yankees like to roll.

have you ever hear a native chicagoan pronounce "Des Plaines, IL" (a chicago burb)?

it would make your Quebecois ears bleed.

"DEZ-plainz" :haha:

There are a few Presque Isles, so going with Erie seems like it was for the best?

Yeah, I know.

I once hung out with people from there over in Europe.

And let's not even get into the Grand Tetons... ;)

No. Toronto's original name was 'York' but was changed as it sounded too similar to 'New York'. 'Toronto' is a better choice as it's unique. Besides, the word York is still found all over the city. 3 of the city's 6 boroughs use it: North York, East York, York. (The other 3 are Toronto, Scarborough, and Etobicoke). There's York University, the Royal York Hotel, Fort York, York Street, and the old nickname is 'Muddy York'.

Downtown Toronto

https://greenreason.ca/wp-content/up...ork-6-sm-1.jpg
https://greenreason.ca/projects/one-york/

:haha:

That's as bad (good) as how Pittsburghers pronounce their suburb, North Versailles.

"North Ver-SALES"

Oh man this hits home

I always heard "Chicago" was the Anglicized version of the Gallicized version of the Native American word for smelly onions.

So basically it took the French to get from Shikakwa to Chicago.

I went to 8th and 9th grades in York County schools many years ago. That York County being what was left north of Steeles Avenue of the original York County after the creation of "Metro" Toronto. Oh, and don't forget Yorkville.

:haha:

i was once travelling in north central PA near a town named "Du Bois", and on the radio i head several different local commercials pronounce the name as "DO boys", and in that awesome rural western pennsylvania accent no less....... just magical.


we americans have raised the pronunciation destruction of french place names in our nation to an art form.

What about Fort Rouillé (Rusty Fort)?

yes, the french, as the first euro explores of the region, gave it the french name as an intermediate step.

it went from Shikakwa --> Chécagou --> Chicago.

i think we can all agree that any of them would have been better than "Fort Dearborn, IL".

True, there are... though I imagine that Erie (the French fort Presque Isle and the first settlement around it) was the first of the "Presque Isles", established back in the early 1750s. Maybe Presque Isle, Maine is older?

"Presque Isle" sounds so much nicer than "Peninsula." I mean, "peninsula" is a cool word and all but sounds kind of generic for a town's name.

Oh heck yeah. Some people say DO-boys and some just give a hint of Francais sophisticate, with Do-BOY...

I've never heard anyone in western PA pronounce it as Do-Bwah... they would probably branded a real fancy pants type.