I have always been interested in the names for small towns and communities. Some simply come from the founders surnames, and are usually rather conventional - the name, with ville or berg/burg/burgh or town/city attached.
Other names might reflect who occupied (notice I do not say "owned") the land first...until it was, er...shall we say, stolen by someone else... Sometimes the original names stay. Sometimes those names are replaced by the names of the second set of occupiers.
I live in Mississippi. We have many unusual place names. Some cover the obvious, as stated above - founder's surname, or sometimes his wife's name (always his wife, never her husband...), with something else attached, and the usual historical figures.
We have Flowood (a Jackson suburb) from founder Mr. Underwood's wife Florence, hence "Flowood". Or Mr. Hardy's wife, Hattie, which gives us "Hattiesburg".
Names with history aren't really strange, but intensely interesting. Here we have many Choctaw/Houma/Ofo/Chickasaw/Quapaua/Biloxi/Tunica/Natchez names that remain, and are attached to the respective towns of Natchez, Tunica, and Biloxi. Add to that lots of county names such as Chickasaw, Choctaw, Coahoma, Copiah, Issaquena, Itawamba, Neshoba, Noxubee, Oktibbeha, Panola, Pontotoc, Tippah, Tishomingo, Tunica, Yalobusha, and Yazoo.
And then there's Leflore County...I'm not really sure how I feel about it's namesake, Greenwood LeFlore (or actually, LeFleur). He is an enigma to me. Was an advocate for US citizenship for Native people (being of mixed race himself) but also signed the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, and helped facilitate the subsequent Removal...
BTW, the state capitol, Jackson (yeah, thanks a lot, Andy...) was originally named LeFleur's Bluff.
Speaking of conquerors, I am choosing to pointedly ignore county names like Lamar or Forrest - where I grew up - because they have names of nasty-assed people, and sadly, their influence can still be felt...
We've got other folk's names attached also... Bolivar County (yep, it's that Bolivar; and as such, sort of one of the good guys) and De Soto County, and Lafayette County...
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