NAMES IN AMERICA
Kasper, Sydney H.
NamesInAmerica NAMES ON THE LAND, by George R. Stewart. Random House. 418 Pages. $3.00. Reviewed by Sydney H. Kasper IF you were to tell someone that you lived in Vlachte-bosch and worked on the...
...Ta-coma dispute that kept the State of Washington agog for years...
...why Colorado was first named Idaho...
...Stewart would have done much better to shorten the book by one-third and make it the first section in a comprehensive encyclopedia of place names in the United States...
...albeit tiring reading of Names on the Land...
...why the Mormons termed their country "The Desert...
...Reviewed by Sydney H. Kasper IF you were to tell someone that you lived in Vlachte-bosch and worked on the corner of Breede Wagh and De Waal in New Eburacum, he'd probably say you were crazy—and rightly so, unless you quickly added that you were using the original place names for Flatbush, Broadway and Wall, and New York...
...Reading it page after page gives you the sensation of trying to digest the Encyclopedia Brittanica...
...Incidentally, how would you like to spend your next vacation in the Bai Verte region of Ouisconsing...
...These and hundreds of other curious sidelights on American history, from the custom of the Spaniards to name new places after saints or religious holidays to the irreverent naming of California's mining camps by the Forty-Niners, make up the fascinating...
...Rainier-Mt...
...debunking of such accepted translations as "Land-of-the-Sky-Blue-Water" for Minnesota...
...However, even random reading is an enriching experience...
...how the successive tides of Dutch, French, English, and German emigration have left their imprint on our maps...
...Here you'll read the manner by which cities, states, and rivers were named, unnamed, and re-named to suit either local prejudice, Congressional whimsy, or Victorian gentility, the famous Mt...
...how the Middle Western States almost came to be known as Chersoneus, Metropotamia, Polypotamia, Assensipia, and Pelisipia...
Vol. 9 • November 1945 • No. 47
