Adam-amd-Eve Alley to Zigzag

NAMES ON THE LAND--George R. Stewart--Random House ($3).

A few centuries after the birth of Christ, an Anglo-Saxon invader named Leaxa settled in the Midlands of ancient Britain. His settlement was named Laxton, or Lexington--"the place of Leaxa's men." More than a thousand years later, men carried this already hoary name to the colony of Massachusetts where, one morning in 1775, it suddenly became historic. The name & fame of Lexington spread like wildfire through the colonies, until at last it even reached a lonely hunting camp far beyond the Cumberland Gap. "Let us call this place Lexington," said one of the hunters admiringly. And so they did.

This story of how Lexington, Ky. became the first town to be christened by free Americans is one of hundreds in this fascinating 418-page "Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States" by George R. Stewart (Bret Harte, TIME, Dec. 21. 1931 ; Storm, TIME, Dec. 1, 1941). Its 2,000-odd place names run from Adam-and-Eve Alley to Zigzag.

Mecheweami-ing into Wyoming. From the Indians, the U.S. has inherited one of its richest stores of names--those of no less than "26 states, 18 of the greatest cities, most of the larger lakes and longer rivers, a few of the highest mountains, and thousands of smaller towns and natural features." But most of these treasured names, Author Stewart explains, are by now about as Indian as the aboriginal forest trail now called Broadway. Even in their original forms they were often so old that their source and meaning puzzled the Indians themselves. Clipped and pummeled into pronounceable shape by Spaniards, Frenchmen, Russians, Harvardmen, gold miners, railroad presidents and sentimental poets, they ended up as much Greek as Indian. In fact, they were American--the first ingots from the great U.S. verbal melting pot that put the second "C" in Connecticut (no one knows who did, or why), made Wyoming out of Mecheweami-ing, Oregon out of Ouiscon-sink (though some Irish patriots still insist that O'Reagan is the obvious source), Laughing Waters out of the onomatopoetic Minne-baba.

L'eau Froide & Low Freight. When the first Spaniards and Frenchmen set foot in the New World they bestowed their most resounding titles on their settle ments and, like the Indians, kept the simpler, descriptive names for streams, woods and hillocks. But to their plain, pioneering successors, both these sorts of names were fancy nuisances. When a henchman of King Philip of Spain sonorously created La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco (The Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis), he had hardly turned his back before it was ruthlessly hacked down to what it is today: Santa Fe.

The French fared even worse. Some of their importations survived (portage, grand rapids, mile, prairie), but by the time a few generations of American settlers had gone to work on them, L'eau Froide (cold water) was Low Freight, Pomme de Terre was Pumly Tar, and the dignified river L'Ours (bear) was simply Louse Creek. Strangest of all, perhaps, was the fate of a settlement named after the Dutchman De Geoijen. In short order it became De Queen, and the local news paper De Queen Bee.

The struggle between dignity and simple usage was not merely a matter of Europeans v. Americans. Author Stewart shows clearly that when Congress and state legislatures took a hand in place-naming they usually gave free rein to the politician's love of rolling syllables (Maine is the only one-syllable state name in the Union). With profound respect for a great democrat, Congress named three tributaries of the Jefferson River Philosophy, Wisdom and Philanthropy -- only to find the people of the region stubbornly continuing to call them what they always had: Willow Creek, Big Hole and Stinking Water.

Bee Pee & XRay. Sir Walter Scott, said Mark Twain, did "more real and lasting harm" with his "sham grandeurs" than "any other individual that ever wrote." Today, few Americans suspect how many thousands of native place names are directly or indirectly Sir Walter's. "Poetic" names built around glen, dale, vale, hurst, mere and burn broke out like a rash in the late 1800s; soon they enclosed many cities "like a ring of outer fortifications," protecting them from such vulgarisms as creek, gap, bottom and bluff. "Even if a city-dweller could escape moving to the suburbs [of Larchmont, Glen Cove and Scarsdale] in his life, he was nevertheless very likely to end up finally in [a cemetery ] named Oakmont or Woodland." And where Sir Walter failed, estate agents of the boom 1920s often succeeded. The town of Mosquito became Troutdale, Zigzag switched to Rhododendron, Screamerville to Chancellor, Bee Pee to the more progressive Chevrolet. Recently named post offices include XRay, Radio, Gasoline, Tarzan, Gene Autry.

Few nations, concludes Author Stewart, can boast a nomenclature "so definitely linked with actual men and events," or composed to such an extent by "all classes from border ruffian to Boston Brahmin." Pastoral simplicities like Seldom Seen, Possum Glory, Chicken Bristle, Hog Eye, Ticklenaked, Pokamoonshine, Stop-theJade, Bug Tussel and Pennsylvania's neighboring Intercourse and Fertility are as native and natural as those that recall forgotten troubles and tragedies--Cape Fear, Cape Foulweather, Gunsight Hills, Broken Bow, Massacre Lake, Deadman Creek. "The other Tokyo." World War II has shown that local pride-of-name can now stand up to anything. Except for Germania and Swastika, not a single U.S. town has shed its German name. All four Tokyos have survived, showing, says Author Stewart, "that the state of mind seems to be more strongly than ever that the names belong to us--to alter them would be repudiation of our own history." As Mrs. Ara Green, assistant postmistress of Tokyo, Tex. (pop. 50) put the matter: "We have started out to change the other Tokyo. ..."

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