Do you ever wish your city kept its original name?

[mrnyc]

manahatta or new amsterdam (city?) would have been fine for nyc.

speaking of manahatta and the lenape/delaware natives, they were going to build a museum and statue to native americans at ft wadsworth in staten island next to the verrazano bridge that was taller than the statue of liberty, but ww1 intervened and afterward the big statue part was forgotten.

the museum moved around a bit uptown until it landed in the beautiful old custom house at the foot of manhattan island in 1994:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo...and-180970472/

[harryc]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

I've noticed you've been posting about Rockford a bit lately, did you recently move out that way?

Yes I am now living in both Rockford and Oak Park - I-90 is my friend.

Oak Park is a good village name - we have Oak trees . and we are not Cicero.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Is this common in the west? The "Indian" casinos in the east seem to mostly use their tribal names.

It's a mix of Spanish and native, or maybe actually more like Hispanicized native names.

Here's a sampling of native casinos in SoCal:

Chumash
Pechanga
Agua Caliente
San Manuel
Morongo
Soboba
Pala
Pauma

And many local names that people think are Spanish are actually native-origin.

wikipedia:

Modern place names with Chumash origins include Malibu, Nipomo, Lompoc, Ojai, Pismo Beach, Point Mugu, Port Hueneme, Piru, Lake Castaic, Saticoy, Simi Valley and Somis.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Is this common in the west? The "Indian" casinos in the east seem to mostly use their tribal names.

The only "Indian" casino I know of out east is the Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut... I went there when visiting family friends who lived in NJ back in the late 1990s because my mom and her friend wanted to go gambling. Not sure which tribal land Foxwoods is on, but I guess I could look it up...

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

The only "Indian" casino I know of out east is the Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut... I went there when visiting family friends who lived in NJ back in the late 1990s because my mom and her friend wanted to go gambling. Not sure which tribal land Foxwoods is on, but I guess I could look it up...

Isn't the Turning Stone Casino near Utica NY owned and operated by an Indigenous group?

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

The only "Indian" casino I know of out east is the Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut...

I don't know how you define "back east", but Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota are filled with "Indian" Casinos.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

I don't know how you define "back east", but Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota are filled with "Indian" Casinos.

I was referring to the northeast, in response to iheartthed's comment of "The "Indian" casinos in the east seem to mostly use their tribal names," and I was assuming he meant the northeast, which made me think of Foxwoods, the only casino on tribal land I've been to in that part of the US... wondering if Foxwoods will rebrand. But anyway, Foxwoods is the only "Indian" casino I know of in the northeast, because I don't keep tabs on any of the other ones.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

The only "Indian" casino I know of out east is the Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut... I went there when visiting family friends who lived in NJ back in the late 1990s because my mom and her friend wanted to go gambling. Not sure which tribal land Foxwoods is on, but I guess I could look it up...

The other big one in Connecticut is Mohegan Sun, which is owned by the Mohegan Tribe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohegan_Tribe

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Isn't the Turning Stone Casino near Utica NY owned and operated by an Indigenous group?

In addition to the one near Utica there is one at the top of New York State in Massena, right across from Cornwall, Ontario. It's owned by the Mohawks.

[mrnyc]

you always knew this was going to happen with the native casinos -- i guess it doesnt matter as much nowadays, but at least they got a leg up -- here is the native gaming law:


In 1988 Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) (signed by President Ronald Reagan) which kept tribal sovereignty to create casino-like halls, but the states and Natives must be in Tribal-State compacts and the federal government has the power to regulate the gaming.

[jd3189]

Originally Posted by tech12

San Francisco used to be known as Yerba Buena, which means "good herb". Before that, there were several native American villages in what is now SF, the biggest of which were apparently: Amuctac, Sitlintac, Tubsinta, Petlenuc,

I hope a dispensary either in SF or anywhere else in CA took on the name "Yerba Buena"

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

At first glance I thought that was a Hindu temple.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by badrunner

You gotta love the linguistic diversity of American placenames. All the native, Spanish and French names. We even have Arabic names (via Spain) like Alhambra.

It's pretty interesting that many if not nearly all Spanish place names were kept after the Mexican-American War. Not only that, but San Francisco doubled-down on Spanish street names when the Sunset was platted, explicitly to make the place seem more exotic to the anglicized city of the early 1900s.

This trend extended as far east as Kansas City, where one of the major boulevards was coined "The Paseo" in the 1890s. Also, Kansas City's famous Plaza was built in a Spanish Mission style.

I'm not aware of any Spanish street namings east of Kansas City.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

I'm not aware of any Spanish street namings east of Kansas City.

Many streets in NOLA's French Quarter have the earlier Spanish names on small plaques underneath the larger French street names. And Florida MUST have some Spanish street names.

ETA: New Orleans was originally French, then Spanish-controlled, then control reverted back to France. The "French Quarter" area actually dates mostly from that Spanish period.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

The only "Indian" casino I know of out east is the Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut... I went there when visiting family friends who lived in NJ back in the late 1990s because my mom and her friend wanted to go gambling. Not sure which tribal land Foxwoods is on, but I guess I could look it up...

There's a bunch. Aside from Foxwoods, there a a few indian-owned casinos along the I-90 corridor around Syracuse-Utica area -- not sure what they're called. Also:


Mohegan Sun - Uncasville, CT
Mohegan Sun Pocono - Wilkes-Barre, PA
Seneca Allegany - Salamanca, NY
Seneca Buffalo Creek - Buffalo, NY
Seneca Niagara - Niagara Falls, NY

Miccosukee Gaming - Miami, FL
Seminole Hard Rock Casino - Hollywood, FL
Seminole Coconut Creek Casino - Pompano Beach, FL

I think Florida has a bunch more.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by bilbao58

Many streets in NOLA's French Quarter have the earlier Spanish names on small plaques underneath the larger French street names. And Florida MUST have some Spanish street names.

I knew that. Duh. Would have lost at trivia night.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by JManc

There's a York in ME, PA, not too mention the one in England plus a New York Mills, NY (which none confuses with the other New York) so changing from York to Toronto seems like a BS excuse.

The Town of York became Toronto in 1834. Whether they'd be confusion between York & New York in 2021 is immaterial. It's pointless to dispute the historical record but that's your prerogative, I suppose.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by bilbao58

I just googled it. York County was officially dissolved in 1971, which coincidentally was the year we moved there. I guess they just had yet to change the name of the school board which was called York County Board of Education.

The one I found amusing was the the police and fire departments in the City of North York. Wouldn't they be the NYFD and NYPD?

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Kitchissippi would have been a cool name for Ottawa. It is the Algonquin name for the Ottawa River that the city was built along and named for.

It means Great River and I'd agree that Kitchissippi sounds way better than that, and also better than Grande Rivière in French.

Interesting that in the mid 1800s Ottawa residents chose to change their city's name from the British-sounding Bytown to the Indigenous name Ottawa.

Things probably didn't often change in that direction in those days.

I like the name 'Ottawa' but I've always been curious about that town just outside Ottawa called 'Mississippi Mills'. The word seems indigenous to that area yet there's the identical word in the US, the state of Mississippi. Are the Algonquin and the tribe in the US state of Mississippi related linguistically? The Navajo, apparently, trace their roots to the Dene people in northern Canada so it is plausible.

(Almonte) Mississippi Mills, Ontario
Home town of James Naismith (inventor of basketball)

https://mywanderingvoyage.com/2019/0...monte-ontario/

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by isaidso

I like the name 'Ottawa' but I've always been curious about that town just outside Ottawa called 'Mississippi Mills'. The word seems indigenous to that area yet there's the identical word in the US, the state of Mississippi. Are the Algonquin and the tribe in the US state of Mississippi related linguistically?

The Navajo, apparently, trace their roots to the Dene people in northern Canada so it is plausible.

We get the word "Mississippi" from the Ojibwe around the Great Lakes. The river was named by the French voyageurs looking for the passage between Quebec and Nouvelle-Orleans. Then when states were being carved out, the name was picked for a far southern reach of the river. It's a name that has traveled the length of the river.