BUTTERMILK, Kan. (KPR) - What's in a name? More specifically, what's in a place name? Kansas place names have been weighing on the mind of Commentator Rex Buchanan.
(Transcript)
For the past couple of years, especially lately, there's been a lot of talk about place names.
In part because I worked at the Kansas Geological Survey and spent lots of time looking at maps, I've long been intrigued by Kansas place names. One of my favorite lines during field trips went something like this. We'd drive past a river or a town and I'd ask, for example:
Do you know why they call it the Smoky Hill River?
Answer: Because that's its name.
You may not find that entertaining. I do. Plus it's true.
Because Kansas was settled by white people in the 1860s and 1870s, many of our place names come from Civil War soldiers (like Sherman), politicians (like Douglas), or railroad men (like Stilwell). And most of those names were from men. Only one county, Barton, is named after a woman. Clara Barton, civil war nurse and founder of the American Red Cross.
I've always been a little surprised at how few Native American place names have survived. Some counties have versions of Native words, like Shawnee and Cheyenne. Several of our rivers are derivations of Native names, like Arkansas or Ninnescah. And the name of the state itself comes, of course, from the Kansa Indians.
But many Native names were replaced by European names. It's almost as if we weren't content to erase Native American physical presence from the landscape. We had to replace their place names too.
In spite of that, I've got some favorite place names in the state. I love Buttermilk, a ghost town in southwestern Kansas' Comanche County (hey, another Native name). I like the optimism of Garden City and El Dorado. I like the incongruous, like Liberal. I like the almost unpronounceable names of mostly-forgotten places like Wonsevu and Elkader. Shoot, I like the name of my home town, Little River, named after the Little Arkansas River.
But does any of this make any difference? Does it matter what we call a place?
There's a riddle, sometimes attributed to Abraham Lincoln, that goes something like this: If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? The answer, four. Because calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.
You can read that several ways, but it seems to me to imply that it doesn't matter what you call something, it doesn't change that thing.
Far be it from me to argue with Abe, but I'm not so sure. I think names do matter. I think how we refer to a place on the landscape shapes how we think about it.
Names aren't just a reflection of what's important to us, like wars and soldiers and such. They're a reflection of what we see in the landscape and how we remember it. The Little Arkansas River may be small, but it's important. People in Lawrence use that Free State moniker to make a point.
So, as you're out and about this fall, notice the names of the places you pass. Consider what they say about us and about the land. And please, let's not change the name of Buttermilk. ###
Commentator Rex Buchanan is a writer, author and director emeritus of the Kansas Geological Survey. He lives in Lawrence.
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