Book Description

Excerpt from The Washington Historical Quarterly, Vol. 1: October, 1906; Issued Quarterly The geographical names in the United States are derived from two great sources: Indian and European. Among the first ex plorers and settlers the former dominated; with the second gen cration of colonists the European names began to dominate. These early colonists looked to their European homes and per sonages for Plymouth, Boston, Albemarle, St. Mary's, Ft. Chris tina, New Rochelle, New Orleans, St. Louis, Santa Fe; or else from their own languages derived names indicative of local con ditions or feelings: Providence, Philadelphia. \vhen these set tlements themselves began to send OH scions to the upper waters of the Atlantic streams or into the transallegheny country, new names were taken from a variety of sources; from the old Euro pean places and personages, from Greece, Rome, or from classical compositions, e. G. Louisville, Athens, Rome, Oxford, Gallipolis. The Indian names were taken from the local Indian designations, and today stand as monuments to the natives' haunts and homes and as milestones to their westward movement before the coming white man. As the white man came his names told of the fond recollections of his distant home but as he penetrated the wilder ness and the mountains, these recollections dim and finally fade, to be replaced from the new native home in the old Atlantic col onies. Yet the names scattered from the Alleghenies to the Pacific by the constant stream of colonizing immigrants tell of the nomenclatural geneology; the Swede, Italian and German, the Russian, Dutch and Pole, even in our own days repeat the christening of the cavalier and Puritan. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.