NAMES ON THE GLOBE

George R. Stewart’s last great book was Names On The Globe.  He wrote another names book, American Given Names, before he died, (see earlier post about  that book) but it was a dictionary and history of selected American names.  Names On The Globe, like his classic and never-duplicated Names On The Land, was a history of place-naming – in this case, on a global scale. Here, in the last post about one of Stewart’s major publications, is a short essay about the book.

As in Names On The Land, Stewart has created a rich, complex, and deep – but easily understood – history of the process of place naming and of eras of place naming.  Although it is supposedly about global naming, for many obvious and practical reasons GRS focuses on names in the areas we then called “western civilization.”  He was not a Chinese or Japanese scholar, nor an African one, nor one who knew much of Aboriginal languages and culture.  So he stuck with what he did know, with some brief chapters and comments about other regions of the world – assuming, probably, that others who came after him might add deeper histories of the naming in those places.  Another reason for emphasizing “Western Civilization” is that he spoke or read many Indo-European languages, and had studied the history of most Indo-European countries (save India), so he could do the scholarship necessary to tease out the story of those names.

He takes a different approach to understanding place naming in this book, beginning with an examination of Man as a Namer.  No recorded human society is without names.  Some have evolved, GRS says, and others were bestowed.  That is, in finding a previously unknown river its name “new river” evolved from the name of the original river.  But Tamsen’s Town was a name that would have been bestowed on a place by settlers of travelers.

GRS continues by considering the mind of Man the Namer, as he explains the types of place names given, and the reasons for giving them.  Some places, for example, were important to the namers because of incidents that happened there (Colt Killed Creek), others show possession  (Wassa’s Town, Washington),  others commemorate great (or small) events (Washington’s Crossing), and so forth.

In Part III, the longest section, GRS describes the names and naming in various places around the globe.  In discussing Celtic names, in modern Europe, he points out that they were so well-connected with the land that they outlasted the names later given by the Romans, even if in altered form.  But, as he points out, some of the “Celtic” names were probably originally given by earlier settlers.

Part IV is especially interesting, as Stewart considers important uses for ancient names – as tools for archaeologist, historians, and other scholars.  Fittingly, since Stewart was, after all, a poet who wrote prose, he ends with a chapter about place names as useful tools for poets. “…The romantic appeal springs from sonorous syllables, and from a sense of the strange, bizarre, and wonderful. …” Stewart writes, noting that the poet or author needs not to know the meaning of the name to use it in his work.  He quotes several famous poets who are known for the excellent use of such names, mentions Stephen Vincent Benet’s American Names.  And he quotes, appropriately, the beautiful opening of his own Names on the Land, where he lists the wonderful names found here – Gunsight Pass, Lone Pine, Broken Bow, Roaring Run, and the others.

He finishes the book, as he sometimes finished his works, with a reflection on even the most prosaic seeming of names, Cowbridge.  Did a cow fall from the bridge?  Or refuse to cross?  “….even the simple Cowbridge stirs the imagination,” George R. Stewart writes, as he finishes his great work.

The Author’s Note brings that work to a close.  He will finish and publish his book on American given names, but this, he knows, is his last great work.  So he honors his greatest friend, his wife, Theodosia, “who,” he writes, “might well be given the title Encourager of Books.”

And, thus, Opus Perfeci.  For this study of the books of George R. Stewart, and his life, and related topics.  Depending on what may come, I plan to add more as things of interest show up.  And since Stewart wrote of Earth from the view of space, ground, ecosystem, language, history, literature, and so on, I still have a broad canvas to draw on.

In the meantime, many thanks to all of you – from nearly 60 countries, in every continent save Antarctica at last count – who have visited this site, read the posts, commented on them, and encouraged the work.  You have been an inspiration.

 

 

 

NAMES ON THE LAND

Wallace Stegner’s  fine essay, “George R. Stewart and the American Land,” originally written for a re-issue of Stewart’s Names On The Land is now more easily found in Stegner’s last work, Where The Bluebird Sings To The Lemonade Springs.  Written a year after Stewart’s death, the essay is a consideration of  Stewart and his work.  But the focus is on Stewart’s unprecedented work about American place-naming.  In another essay, Stegner described Names on the Land as an unprecedented book – “Nobody ever wrote a book like this before…”  fine praise from a great writer, who recognized the quality and uniqueness of Stewart’s book.

Stewart described the book like this:  “There’s no model for that book… It is absolutely on its own.” Others had collected the meanings of place names.  But no one before Stewart had attempted to write a national history of place-naming – that is, a history which explained why we Americans chose to name places in certain ways at certain times in our history.  As usual, Stewart wrote the book with the general literate reader in mind, as well as the scholar, so although it is meticulously-researched, the book is also beautifully written and easy-to-read.

It begins, thus:

Once, from eastern ocean to western ocean, the land stretched away without names.  Nameless headlands split the surf; nameless lakes reflected nameless mountains; and nameless rivers flowed through nameless valleys into nameless bays.

Read those opening words and you know the author has done his share of historical research, and he understands the music of language.

Stewart begins with the words of Those Who Preceded Europeans, the Native people – the people whose names still sprinkle the land, east to west,  from Massachusetts to Mississippi to Tuolumne, and north to south from Dakota to Arkansas to Acoma.  As each different language group settles, and sprinkles names on the land, he tells their story.

Names often reflect culture.  The Spanish usually named places for the Catholic saint whose day was being celebrated on the day the Spanish “discovered” the place. The San Andreas Fault is so named because the Portola Expedition found a small lake in the fault valley on the feast day of Saint Andrew.  The French also named for Saints – St. Louis – but also for more earthy things – Grand Tetons.  Americans heading west by wagon, however, were more practical, naming landmarks in a way that would help those who followed:  Pilot Peak was a landmark to steer your wagon toward, but Stinking Water Pass was not the place to drink or fill water containers (you waited for the next pass, Sweetwater).

In some cases, original names were so modified by later settlers that original meanings are lost – “Purgatoire River” became “Picketwire” to the cowboys, for example. In the mixed American culture, names often combined languages’ words and grammar – thus “the Alamo” and Paso Robles (rather than the proper Spanish name, “El Paso de los Robles”).

When all was said and done, we had names to inspire us, and the world.  Many of the names were so beautiful in sound and spelling, and so poignant in history, that they became legendary: Golden Gate, Yosemite, Florida, Montana, the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, Route 66,  Mt. Shasta, Death Valley, the Great Plains, the Colorado River, the Rio Grande, the Missouri, Hollywood, Annapolis, and on and on.  Others were simple American names, often given with a touch of good American humor.  Bug Tussle, Cutlips, Accident, Nameless, Difficult, Nipple Butte, Show Low, Weedpatch, Punkin Center, and their kin are spread across this land.

Stewart’s book was a major success, even inspiring a program in the literate radio detective series,  “The Ghost Town Mortuary” in The Casebook of Gregory Hood. (An actor portraying Stewart helps Hood locate a kidnapper’s hideout when he identifies the one-word message from the victim as the name of a town.)  The book has been reprinted several times, most recently by The New York Review of Books Press.

Stewart once said that Names on the Land would never be translated  because of all his books it was the most specific to our nation’s use of plac name words.  But if current plans work out,  it is going to be translated, into Chinese.  Translator Junlin Pan, and Meng Kai, Geographic Editor of China’s most prestigious publishing house, Commercial Press,  have accepted the challenge.  The Chinese people are deeply interested in America – in how we have accomplished what we have accomplished – and are trying to learn as much about our culture as possible.  Names on the Land is certainly as good an introduction to American culture as anything every written, so it’s a good – if difficult – work to translate.

I’m sure that if George R. Stewart were alive he would be following the Chinese publishing project with keen interest. Of all the books he wrote,  Names on the Land  was his personal favorite.  It was as challenging for him to research and write the book as it will be for Junlin Pan to do a  translation that captures the nuances, the cross-linguist nature, and the wry humor of the names on our land, as sung in Stewart’s fine book.  I wish Junlin Pan and the Commercial Press all the best, and I wait with bated breath for the result.