The burghers of Stateline, Nev., loathe the town`s name. They complain that it fails to impress outsiders with the natural beauties of the place: the string of casinos lining the shore of fabled Lake Tahoe.
”Where is Stateline?” jokes Douglas County Manager Richard Gruber, who supports the name change. ”Most people who have been to Lake Tahoe or are headed west to Nevada would not recognize the name Stateline.”
Stateline`s citizens and officials have taken their case to an obscure federal agency, the United States Board of Geographic Names, in Washington. Like an ambitious starlet, the town wants its name changed to the classier and more marketable Lake Tahoe.
”Normally, the board goes along with citizens who want a new name,”
explains Donald Orth, the retiring executive secretary of the board`s Domestic Names Committee. ”But this is a strange case,” he adds. ”Elsewhere around Lake Tahoe people from other resort communities object that Stateline is trying to usurp the lake for itself.”
The State of Nevada submitted Stateline`s request to the board. But the board sent it back because the state had failed to make any recommendation on the proposed change. Another round of hearings appears certain.
The board is the nation`s storehouse of an estimated 3 million U.S. place names. It keeps track of all populated places, churches, cemeteries as well as such geographic features as hills, mountains and rivers.
”I think names are very important,” Orth says in the
tones of a true believer. ”We identify ourselves and things outside ourselves by names. They become part of our personal communications system. They also enter into our thought processes and become part of our psyche. We become emotional over names.”
Stateline`s petition is among the 1,000 or so requests for name changes the board reviews each year. Most involve places with no official name, and fewer than one-third of these requests are approved.
By law the board remains the final authority on the names and spellings of domestic and foreign places as well as geographic features, including those in Antarctica and undersea, on government maps and documents.
Curiously, the name of the board itself, which recently marked its 100th year of handling such requests, is little known outside the bowels of the federal bureaucracy. Perhaps because of its diffuse connections with various government arms, it is not listed in any telephone directory or in the federal budget.
Although it is officially under the aegis of the Interior Department, the board relies on the expertise of such diverse agencies as the Departments of Agriculture, Defense and Commerce; the CIA; the Postal Service; the Library of Congress; and the U.S. Geological Survey.
Orth`s Domestic Names Committee, with a permanent staff of 12, meets once a month to consider its docket of petitions. After 41 years of government service, as a cartographer in Alaska and the West before joining the board in 1959, Orth is obviously well-versed in the law and the lore behind geographic names. At his office in wooded Reston, Va., the native of Fond du Lac, Wis., discusses some of the rules that govern the board`s deliberations.
”The board does not allow a living person to be commemorated,” he points out. And people`s names can be used only if there is ”some association between the individual and the area or feature to be named.”
In 1962 the board formally adopted a policy that forbids the use of names containing ”Jap” or ”nigger” on government maps and in publications. Board policy dictates that no name will be considered if it is offensive to a particular racial, ethnic or religious group.
Even names that appear to be perfectly acceptable, Orth says, may still grate on members of a particular nationality. As an example, he mentions Chinaman Spring in Yellowstone National Park, a landmark that last year was officially renamed Chinese Spring.
”It had a good genealogy; apparently a Chinese person once used it as a laundry because of its hot water,” says Orth, ”but in the West the term
`Chinaman` is assumed by Chinese-Americans to be derogatory.”
In a Library of Congress exhibition commemorating the board`s centennial, several examples are given of place names that have been changed because of their unflattering racial and ethnic overtones:
– Gringo Peak, N.M., to Robinson Peak.
– California`s Nigger Jack Hill, to Negro Jack Hill.
– Jewtown, Ga., to Brunswick East, Ga.
– Polack Lake, Mich., to Cornerlake.
The exhibition, ”A World of Names,” which continues through April, contains examples of how topographical features suggestive of the human anatomy-invariably female-have inspired place names. For example, Wyoming`s Grand Tetons have their origins in the French word for breast, teton.
One of the board`s more memorable controversies concerned the name of a piece of land in southeastern Oregon commonly known as Whorehouse Meadow. It paid tribute to the madams who regularly encamped there during sheep-herding season.
Nevertheless, the Bureau of Land Management renamed the spot Naughty-Girl Meadow, a genteelism that riled local residents. With the support of the Oregon Historical Society in the early 1970s, they successfully petitioned the board to restore the popular name.
Who has the final say?
Although the board is under no legal obligation to do so, for more than 30 years, according to Orth, it has always consulted with state agencies, whenever possible, on new names and name changes. In Illinois, he says, the board has relied on Lawrence Seits, an English teacher at Waubonsee Community College in Sugar Grove, for questions about names there.
Occasionally the board`s authority over place names has been tested by the White House and Congress. Shortly after the assassination of President John Kennedy in 1963, President Lyndon Johnson pressured the board to forgo its usual procedures and rename Cape Canaveral, Fla.-the operational site of the U.S. space program-in Kennedy`s honor.
Orth recalls that the switch never sat well with local residents.
”They did not like to see one of the earliest American place names-it originated in the 1540s-changed by presidential whim,” he says. By an act of Congress, the cape reverted to its original Spanish name in 1973.
Still at issue is who has the final say in such matters: the board or Congress. Since the 1970s, Alaska has sought to have Mt. McKinley, North America`s highest peak, called by the Indian name of Denali, like the surrounding national park.
According to Orth, a prospector named the peak in honor of William McKinley on learning that the Ohioan had been nominated as the Republican presidential candidate. The name stuck after the prospector later recounted his adventures in a New York Sun article that included a sketch of the mountain.
Sympathy over McKinley`s assassination in 1901 for a long time blocked attempts to change the name of the Alaska landmark. In recent years Rep. Ralph Regula (R.-Ohio), who represents McKinley`s home district, has regularly inserted provisions into Interior Department appropriations that prevents the board from acting on the proposed change.
Another recurring issue involves the state of Washington`s scenic Mt. Rainier, which was named by English explorer George Vancouver in honor of a Royal Navy admiral. In the late 19th Century, when the cities of Seattle and Tacoma were vying to become the railroad mecca of the Northwest, Tacoma sought to have the landmark changed to the Indian name Takoma or Takhoma.
”Well, the state Legislature recommended to the board that the name be changed and then backed off,” Orth says. ”Congress refused to make the change, and after several hearings in the 1890s the board decided the name Mt. Rainier should be retained.”
With the end of World War I, new attempts were made to rename Mt. Rainier. But, Orth says, ”the board did not back down; it was an honorable name and should be retained.” Still, the board receives at least ”one or two requests” a year to scuttle Mt. Rainier in favor of Takoma.
Murky origins
To demonstrate America`s romance with place names, the Library of Congress has arranged a display of T-shirts alongside antique maps and other scholarly materials. One shirt proclaims, ”Ah Chicago! `I shall set you on fire with the flames of my heart …` Ah Great Chicago.”
Other T-shirts reflect similar sentiments: ”I (H) Intercourse, Pa.,”
and ”Frankly, My Dear I Don`t Give a Damn, I`m Going to Philadelphia.”
Reflecting the nation`s immigrant origins are the staggering number of names obviously taken from European places that were intended to commemorate or to rival the foreign location. Still, the origins of some names are murky. Take, for example, Moscow, Idaho, the largest of the 47 Moscows in the U.S. The Library of Congress points out that the town was originally known as Hog Heaven because of an abundance of vegetation favored by pigs.
As the community thrived, sentiment grew for a new name, preferably Paradise Valley. But according to tradition, an acting postmaster who had lived near Moscow, Pa., and Moscow, Iowa, before moving west had the last word.
Among the curiosities in the exhibition is a ”Shamrock Map of the U.S.,” which shows ”a few of the many cities, towns and interesting places having Irish names in America.” Illinois is encrusted with names such as Dooley, Healey, Kane, Kelley, Caseyville, Collinsville, Munster, Murphysboro, Walshville, McCormack and Ft. Sheridan.
Indian names abound in the U.S.; 26 state names derive from Native American languages. ”We really don`t know the (precise) origin or meaning of the Indian names east of the Mississippi River,” Orth says.
`Solid, simple names`
In 1981, residents of Webster, Mass., asked the board to approve the 45-letter Indian name for its lake. They prefer to call it Lake
Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, which reportedly translates from the Nipmunk Indian name as, ”You fish on your side, I fish on my side, nobody fishes in the middle.”
Although the lake is commonly referred to as Lake Webster, the board continues to use a shortened version, which consists of the last 17 letters of the Indian name.
Though Orth relishes ”good solid, simple names,” he especially likes
”more exotic names,” such as Milksick Branch, so-called by early settlers because of a weed that caused sickness, sometimes death, in animals.
”I take joy and pride in our native Indian names,” he says, ”the ones that don`t become, like New York, Neuva York on European maps.” Chicago is a particular favorite.
”It`s such a good name,” he says of Chicago. ”It can`t be translated. Nobody knows positively, but there is a general feeling it means `that which smells` and probably refers to an onion-like plant that grows there.”
