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Place Names in Alabama
By Virginia O. Foscue The University of Alabama Press
Copyright © 1989 The University of Alabama Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-8848-5
INTRODUCTION
Because the geographic names in a region can reveal a wealth of information about the land and its inhabitants, they deserve careful study. I became interested in Alabama place names in 1957, after I. Willis Russell encouraged me to write my master's thesis at The University of Alabama about the names in my home county of Sumter.
The only book then available about names throughout the state was William A. Read's Indian Place Names in Alabama, first published in 1937. After that date, several studies of the names in one or two counties were completed, but no systematic statewide investigation was considered until 1973. At that time, graduate students in my English language classes at The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and colleagues like James B. McMillan who have long been interested in Alabama place names began assisting me with the project that was to be designated, five years later, the Place Name Survey of Alabama. This comprehensive study is to be a part of the Place Name Survey of the United States, now being conducted under the auspices of the American Name Society, a group of scholars organized in 1951 to do research in all areas of onomastics.
In 1982 W. Stuart Harris published Alabama Place-Names, an independent study of the names of well-known geographic features. Although the book contains interesting historical details, Harris relies upon the explanations given in secondary sources, not all of which are accurate; he omits important names like those of two current county seats without stating the reasons for his choices; and he ignores the linguistic aspects of most of the names he does include. Therefore, after closely examining his book, I continued writing this one, already begun in order to make available the preliminary findings of the Alabama survey.
Although the complete linguistic and statistical analysis of the state's names must await the completion of the survey, my assistants and I have collected enough data to reveal the significance of place-name study in Alabama. One observation is that the state has preserved a large number of American Indian forms in its geographic names. According to William A. Read in Indian Place Names in Alabama (xi), the native American tribes once inhabiting the land within the present state boundaries belong to the Muskhogean family. Most of the names are derived from the languages of the Choctaw and the Creek or Muskogee tribes.
The etymological information contained in the entries for these names in the following dictionary was obtained from Read's book and from the appendix by James B. McMillan included in the revised edition of 1984. As Read observes in his introduction (xiii–xiv), the Indian names consist primarily of "designations of animals, birds, fish, soil, reptiles, water-courses, plants, trees, settlements, and prominent features of the landscape" and "personal and tribal names." Most of them are composed of more than one element: in names like Tuscaloosa an adjective follows a noun, in those like Sucarnochee the equivalent of the English his-genitive is used, and in others like Alamuchee and Arbacoochee a diminutive or locative suffix occurs. Other details about Alabama's Indian names can be found in their dictionary entries.
European colonists, as well, left evidence of their importance in Alabama place names. Between 1507 and 1699 Spanish adventurers, among them Hernando de Soto, explored much of the land later included within the state's boundaries and claimed it for their rulers. Between 1699 and 1763 the French, first under the command of Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, occupied the area around Mobile Bay. In 1763 the British gained possession of this land and held it until 1783 when the Spaniards, for the second time, occupied it. They, in turn, held the region bordered by the Gulf of Mexico until 1798 when the United States organized the Mississippi Territory, which then included Alabama, after obtaining the land by treaty. Between 1817 and 1819 Alabama was a separate territory, finally becoming a state on December 14, 1819. Such place names as Bayou la Batre, St. Stephens, and Majors Creek date back to the periods of European occupation of the land that is now Alabama.
From 1798 through the early 1900s people moving into the area from other states gave their new settlements the names of older towns to the north or east such as Society Hill in South Carolina. They also remembered the soldiers and statesmen from their homes, five counties receiving the names of early presidents of the country. These settlers preserved many of the names of local landowners and community leaders, Huntsville and Guntersville being well-known examples. The many descriptive designations they chose provide information about the natural regions in the state, its abundant streams, and its varied flora and fauna. In addition, the settlers revealed their humor with names like Lickskillet, their ideals with those like Christian Home, and their love for their churches in their practice of naming towns for the building that was the nucleus of the community.
The following dictionary of 2,700 names of approximately two thousand geographic features, selected from the Place Name Survey of Alabama and listed alphabetically, includes entries for the names of all towns of over one hundred people and a sizable number of smaller settlements and communities with fewer inhabitants than that figure, as determined by the 1980 census, and all the incorporated municipalities in the state. From the most recent United States Geological Survey Base Maps of Alabama, I obtained all the names of the state's counties, cities, towns, communities, mountains, valleys, capes, islands, rivers, creeks, lakes, bays, lagoons, and sounds appearing on them. Because these maps were published in 1966, I updated my collection with the names of some 240 towns and communities and twenty lakes, these being the ones not on the U.S.G.S. Base Maps that are on the 1983–84 Official Alabama Highway Department Map, the most recent edition when I completed my research. In addition, I include the 30 municipalities incorporated between 1968 and 1980 not on any of the maps. Because I name the former county seats as well as the current one in county entries, I also have separate entries for the 40 former county seats not on the maps, even though some of these are "dead" towns (see Harris 1977, vii). Finally, because I discuss earlier or alternative names of the geographic features, I also include most of these in the alphabetical list.
The only names not cross-referenced but discussed in entries for current towns or communities or for major streams are longer names of the features that consist of the current name plus a morpheme like -ville or one or more words like city; no-longer-used early spellings of Indian names; names of buildings such as stores, churches, schools, mills, and gins that were the focal points for settlements or communities; designations including the generic terms cowpen, field, precinct and beat (a regional word meaning 'voting precinct') of areas where settlements or communities later developed; and tributaries of large streams whose names begin with words such as little or east denoting size or direction. Information about these tributaries can be found under the names of the larger streams that they feed.
I am aware that there must be other names for many of these places than the small number I have included in this study. Also, I recognize that all readers familiar with Alabama will think of names of significant places I have excluded. The reason for such exclusions is that I could not treat all of the more than 52,000 place names in the state in a single volume. Local authorities in some counties have suggested additional names, but I was unable to find such people throughout the state. Because I did not wish to include a disproportionate number of names from only a few counties and because a word like significant has different connotations for different people, I decided to use only the objective criteria I have listed above to make my selections.
The following information, if it could be found, is included in the name entries
1. the current name and other names the place has had;
2. the pronunciation of the current name used by the majority of residents transcribed in phonetic symbols (see Phonetic Symbols), unless a transcription is already available in a biographical, geographical, or English language dictionary;
3. the identification of the feature, unless this is obvious from its name;
4. the location of the place in latitude and longitude to the nearest second (for streams, the coordinates for both the source and the point at which the river or creek empties into a larger stream or body of water), followed by the name of the county or counties;
5. the origin of each name of the feature and the circumstances of each naming;
6. the classification of the name according to type (personal, descriptive, inspirational, etc.) and the process by which the name was formed, unless such details are obvious;
7. the earliest date I have been able to find (for obsolete names, both the earliest and the latest discoverable dates);
8. the source or sources from which I obtained the information about the origin and/or the circumstances of the naming.
Although most studies of the place names in a state locate the places by merely naming the county in which each is located, and a few others contain statements of the approximate distance and direction of the place from a better-known one, I have chosen, instead, to include in most of the dictionary entries the more exact degrees of latitude and longitude. However, readers not familiar with computer-printed coordinates may find these difficult to understand. To locate the city of Birmingham in Jefferson County, for example, one interprets 333114NO864809W as 'Latitude 33 degrees, 31 minutes, 14 seconds north' and 'Longitude 86 degrees, 48 minutes, 9 seconds west' and uses these coordinates in the same way as the letters and numbers appearing to the right of the names of settlements in the indices on recent state maps like those of the Alabama Highway Department and Rand McNally Company.
Many of the sources for the origin of the name and circumstances of the naming given in the dictionary entries are secondary ones, though I did consult all available primary sources as well. To avoid needless repetition, I have not included the following references in every name entry. I obtained the geographic coordinates for the places from the Alabama Geographic Names: Alphabetical Finding List, prepared by the Office of Geographic and Cartographic Research of U.S.G.S., which I then verified with the Department of Agriculture Soil Maps of Alabama. The dates for the post offices are from microfilms of the "Record of Appointment of Postmasters." The dates of incorporation of municipalities are from the complete list sent to me by John F. Watkins, Executive Director of the Alabama League of Municipalities, which I then verified by consulting the published acts of the Alabama general assembly and legislature or local elected officials. These sources and every other book, article, manuscript, document, map, and individual from which or whom I obtained information is identified in the bibliography, listing some six hundred items, at the end of the book. Also included in this list are unpublished works cited by such authors as Bush, McMillan, Rich, Sockwell, and Tamarin that I was unable to consult myself.
Readers interested in the history of Alabama may expect more facts about each place than would be appropriate in a study in which the emphasis is upon the names of places rather than the places themselves. However, if, for example, these readers wish to learn the name of the county or counties in which an older settlement that was not a county seat was located before the creation of its present county, they can do so in two ways. The first is by finding the place on a recent map, using its latitude and longitude as explained above, and then comparing this recent map with the ones in the appendix that show in chronological order the changing names and boundaries of Alabama's counties. The other way is by consulting one or more of the historical sources listed in the bibliography.
It has not been possible for me to account fully for all the place names I selected nor have I been able to answer all questions likely to occur to readers of some of the more nearly complete name entries. However, I have included all the facts that I could find about each name and the circumstances of its naming. When I use undocumented information, I indicate that I am doing so. Each folk etymology contains either the phrase "traditional explanation" or "it is said." The most reasonable suppositions contain the word "probably." The less likely ones begin with "possibly" or "perhaps" or are phrased "may be."
Because some questions about the Alabama place names in this book remain unanswered despite my efforts and those of my assistants to find all the facts, I urge those readers who can supply information to complete or correct any of the dictionary entries to send it to me so that I may include it in the Place Name Survey of Alabama and in later editions of this book.
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Excerpted from Place Names in Alabama by Virginia O. Foscue. Copyright © 1989 The University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
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