Understanding Indian Place Names In Southern New England

In New England, American Indian people have left their ancient footprints in many of the current names for mountains, rivers, lakes, animals, fish, cities, towns, and byways. The first English settlers, who put most of the American Indian words on the map, borrowed names from local tribes. In the process, they often misheard, mispronounced, or misreported what they heard - that is how the place Wequapaugset was given as Boxet or how Musquompskut became Swampscott. In many cases the Indian terms have changed so much over time that linguists are unable to recognize the original spelling and meaning. Others have tried their hand at translations, and have come up with fanciful interpretations that are incorrect, but that have stood the test of time. On the East Coast, the Native cultures and their Algonquian tongues had long faded before most scholarly studies began, so a great many translations of place names often represent a scholar's best guess. In this landmark volume, Dr. Frank Waabu O'Brien of the Aquidneck Indian Council, provides the first indigenous method and process for interpreting regional American Indian place names. Included is a dictionary of the most common misspellings, along with numerous examples of the Indian place names for Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Based on years of research, Understanding Indian Place Names is a landmark publication.

The names which the original inhabitants assigned to our mountains, plains and valleys, are mostly lost. Many of our rivers, bays, and falls of water are yet known by their ancient Indian names. On account of their originality, antiquity, signification, singularity, and sound, these names ought to be carefully preserved. In every respect they are far preferable to the unmeaning application, and constant repetition of an improper Eng­lish name. " Samuel Williams, LL.D., Natural and Civil History of Vermont My sole aim in the production of this volume has been to collect the accessible Indian Place and Proper Names of New England, and to give the locations of the one, with their inter­pretations, as far as possible, and the tribal affiliations of the other.

For nearly 400 years, New England has held an important place in the development of American English, and "New England accents" are very well known in the popular imagination. While other projects have studied various dialect regions of New England, this is the first large-scale academic project since the 1930s to focus specifically on New England English as a whole. In New England English, James N. Stanford presents new variationist sociolinguistic research covering all six New England states, with detailed geographic, acoustic phonetic, and statistical analyses of recently collected data from over 1,600 New Englanders. Stanford and his team of Dartmouth students built this dataset over 8 years of face-to-face fieldwork and online audio recordings and questionnaires. Using acoustic phonetics, computational processing, and dialect maps, the book systematically documents major traditional New England dialect features and their current usage in terms of geography, age, gender, ethnicity, social class, and other factors. This dataset is interpreted in terms of William Labov's outward orientation of the language faculty, dialect levelling, convergence and divergence, and "Hub social geometry." The result is a wide-ranging empirical analysis and theoretical overview of this influential English dialect region.

This invaluable resource provides a detailed guide to the Indian place names of New England, alongside their meanings and significance. Edited by Charles Huden and published by the Museum of the American Indian, this book sheds light on the cultural heritage of the region's indigenous peoples. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This dictionary of Native American places was originally published in 1909. Alphabetically arranged by Native American name, this reference work gives insight into the Native origins of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont cities, towns, rivers, streams, lakes, and other locales. The Abanki confederacy of tribes of northern New England gets their name from the word Wabunaki meaning "land or country of the east" or "morning land."

This dictionary of Native American places was originally published in 1909. Alphabetically arranged by Native American name, this reference work gives insight into the Native origins of Rhode Island cities, towns, rivers, streams, lakes, and other locales. What was the Narragansett territory is closely aligned with the current boundaries of the state of Rhode Island. The significance of the word Narragansett is "at the little point'" or "island."