{"id":1008,"date":"2012-12-04T21:25:04","date_gmt":"2012-12-04T20:25:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/visurus.wordpress.com\/?p=1008"},"modified":"2013-12-10T10:43:09","modified_gmt":"2013-12-10T10:43:09","slug":"etymologic-cartography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ralphstraumann.ch\/blog\/2012\/12\/etymologic-cartography\/","title":{"rendered":"Etymologic cartography"},"content":{"rendered":"

I propose Etymologic cartography as a field of study: Somebody had the simple but appealing idea to simply translate the toponyms on a map to English<\/a>. In this case the subject in question is the USA:<\/p>\n

\"USA_state_names_etymology\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Some of the names are rather interesting (and were unknown to me), e.g. Asleep<\/em> for Iowa<\/em>, Flattened<\/em> Water<\/em> for Nebraska<\/em>, Great Hills<\/em> for Massachusetts<\/em>, Lord of War<\/em> for Delaware<\/em>, Dugout Canoe<\/em> for Missouri<\/em> (see here for an ordinary USA map for comparison<\/a>). Note also, that both peripheral Alaska<\/em> and peripheral Maine<\/em> consider(ed) themselves the Mainland<\/em> and that Idaho<\/em> was apparently named such as a practical joke (really!? \u2013 possibly!<\/a>)!<\/p>\n

Also, the map nicely answers a question a friend of mine recently wondered about (and which I couldn’t answer): Kansas<\/em> apparently means Wind<\/em>, while Arkansas<\/em> means People of the Wind<\/em>!<\/p>\n

The principle of etymologic cartography<\/em> is of course easily transferred to other geographic areas. Though, coming to think of it, given its history the USA has probably a substantial (more than average?) density of toponyms that don’t stem from the local language but rather from Spanish or Aboriginal American languages (think, for example, Utah<\/em>). I wonder what other countries or regions would especially lend themselves to such an experiment?<\/p>\n

(via gisn8<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I propose Etymologic cartography as a field of study: Somebody had the simple but appealing idea to simply translate the toponyms on a map to English. In this case the subject in question is the USA: Some of the names are rather interesting (and were unknown to me), e.g. Asleep for Iowa, Flattened Water for … Continue reading Etymologic cartography<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Etymologic cartography: a new field of study\/fun? US state map with names translated to English:","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[17,23,46,51,52,62,70,113],"class_list":["post-1008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-note","tag-art","tag-cartography","tag-etymology","tag-fun","tag-geo","tag-history","tag-map","tag-text-analysis"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ralphstraumann.ch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/USA_state_names_etymology.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pPwF-gg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphstraumann.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphstraumann.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphstraumann.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphstraumann.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphstraumann.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1008"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphstraumann.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1446,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphstraumann.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions\/1446"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphstraumann.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphstraumann.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphstraumann.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphstraumann.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}