List of place names in Maryland of Native American origin

This is a list of Native American place names in the U.S. state of Maryland. These include counties, townships, cities, towns, and villages.

Counties

• Allegany County - From the Lenape word welhik hane^[1][2] or oolikhanna, which means 'best flowing river of the hills' or 'beautiful stream'.^[3]
• Patuxent County - established in 1654 by an Order in Council.^[4] In 1658 the county was renamed Calvert County.^[5] Named for the Patuxent people, an Algonquian-speaking tribe who were loosely affiliated with the Piscataway tribe.
• Wicomico County - named for the Wicomico River, which in turn derives from the Algonquian words wicko mekee, meaning "a place where houses are built," apparently referring to a Native American town on the banks.

Villages, towns and cities

• Accokeek - named for the Accokeek tribe.
• Aquasco - the name is derived from the Native American name Aquascake.
• Algonquin - named after the Algonquian peoples
• Assateague, Algonquin - Assateague Island
• Catoctin Furnace - the name Catoctin probably derives from the Kittoctons, a Native American tribe or clan which once lived between the Catoctin Mountain and the Potomac River. However, a local tradition asserts that Catoctin means "place of many deer" in a Native American language.
• Chaptico - Chaptico may be Algonquian for "big-broad-river-it-is" and related to the Chaptico tribe visited by Gov. Charles Calvert in 1663.
• Chesapeake Beach - named for the Chesapeake people, an Algonquian-speaking tribe that resided in Virginia.
• Choptank - local tradition has it that the name choptank was a crude Anglicisation of the Algonquian name for the river, probably in the Nanticoke language. There was also a group of Algonquians called the Choptank tribe.^[6]
• Conowingo - Conowingo is a Susquehannock word for "at the rapids".^[7]
• Indian Creek Village
• Indian Head - the peninsula, a "head" of land overlooking the Potomac River, had been long occupied by various cultures of indigenous peoples. The historic Algonquian-speaking Native American tribe was the Mattawoman (likely a band of the Piscataway) encountered by the first English settlers; the latter called the land "Indian Head", meaning "Indian Peninsula".
• Indian Springs
• Matapeake - named for the historic Matapeake tribe, who lived there at the time of English colonization in 1631. Their chief village was on the southeast side of Kent Island.^[8] They were an Algonquian-speaking tribe, related to the paramount chiefdom of the Nanticoke people.
• Nanjemoy - named for the Algonquian-speaking Nanjemoy tribe. They were a sub-tribe of the Piscataway tribe.
• Nanticoke - named for the Nanticoke people, an Algonquian tribe.
• Nassawango Hills - older variations on the same name include Nassanongo, Naseongo, Nassiongo, and Nassiungo meaning "[ground] between [the streams]";^[9] early English records have it as Askimenokonson Creek, after a Native American settlement near its headwaters (askimenokonson roughly translated from the local Algonquian word meaning "stony place where they pick early [straw]berries").^[10]
• North Potomac
• Patapsco - the name Patapsco is derived from pota-psk-ut, which translates to "backwater" or "tide covered with froth" in Algonquian dialect.^[11]
• Patuxent - named for the Patuxent people.
• Piscataway - named for the Piscataway tribe.
• Pocomoke City - "Pocomoke" local /ˈpoʊkoʊmoʊk/, though traditionally interpreted as "dark (or black) water" by local residents, is now agreed by scholars of the Algonquian languages to be derived from the words for "broken (or pierced) ground," and likely referred to the farming practices of the surrounding indigenous peoples.^[12]
• Pomonkey - named for the Pamunkey tribe living in the area. The historical Pamunkey tribe was part of the Powhatan paramountcy, made up of Algonquian-speaking tribes.
• Potomac - Potomac is a European spelling of an Algonquian name for a tribe subject to the Powhatan confederacy, that inhabited the upper reaches of the Northern Neck in the vicinity of Fredericksburg, Virginia. Some accounts say the name means "place where people trade" or "the place to which tribute is brought".^[13] The natives called the river above the falls Cohongarooton,^[14] translated as "river of geese",^[15] and that area was renowned in early years for an abundance of both geese and swans. The spelling of the name has been simplified over the years from "Patawomeke" (as on Captain John Smith's map) to "Patowmack" in the 18th century and now "Potomac".
• Potomac Heights
• Potomac Park -
• Quantico - Quantico is a Native American name meaning "place of dancing."
• Romancoke - the name Romancoke comes from the Algonquian word for "circling of the water."
• Seneca - named for the Seneca people, an Iroquoian tribe.
• Takoma Park - originally the name of Mount Rainier, from Lushootseed [təqʷúbəʔ] (earlier *təqʷúməʔ), 'snow-covered mountain'.^[16] The location on the boundary of DC and Maryland was named Takoma in 1883 by DC resident Ida Summy, who believed it to mean 'high up' or 'near heaven'.^[17]
• Tuxedo - Tuxedo may derive from the Lenape epithet Tùkwsit 'the Wolf Clans',^{[lower-alpha 1]} or from Munsee Delaware p'tuck-sepo 'crooked river'.^[18][19]
• Tuscarora - named for the Tuscarora people, an Iroquoian tribe.
• Wilson-Conococheague - the word Conococheague is translated from the Lenape language to mean "Water of many turns".
• West Pocomoke - derived from Algonquian words for "broken (or pierced) ground,"

Natural features

• Chesapeake Bay - named after the Chesapeake tribe of Virginia. "Chesapeake" is derived from the Algonquian word Chesepiooc referring to a village "at a big river." It is the seventh oldest surviving English place-name in the U.S., first applied as "Chesepiook" by explorers heading north from the Roanoke Colony into a Chesapeake tributary in 1585 or 1586.^[20] In 2005, Algonquian linguist Blair Rudes "helped to dispel one of the area's most widely held beliefs: that 'Chesapeake' means something like 'Great Shellfish Bay.' It does not, Rudes said. The name might actually mean something like 'Great Water,' or it might have been just a village at the bay's mouth."^[21]
• Nassawango Creek - older variations on the same name include Nassanongo, Naseongo, Nassiongo, and Nassiungo meaning "[ground] between [the streams]";^[22] early English records have it as Askimenokonson Creek, after a Native settlement near its headwaters (askimenokonson roughly translated from the local Algonquian word meaning "stony place where they pick early [straw]berries").^[23]
• Patapsco River - the name "Patapsco" is derived from pota-psk-ut, which translates to "backwater" or "tide covered with froth" in Algonquian dialect.^[24]
• Monocacy River - The name "Monocacy" comes from the Shawnee name for the river, Monnockkesey, which translates to "river with many bends." (However, another local tradition asserts that "Monocacy" means "well-fenced garden" in an Indian language.)

See also

• History of Maryland

Bibliography

• Kenny, Hamill. The origin and meaning of the Indian place names of Maryland, Waverly Press, 1961.

Notes

1. Tùkwsit, proper name of the Wolf clans, was literally the epithet 'roundfoot' < tùkw- 'round' + wsit 'foot'; the lower Hudson River area was regarded as home to Wolf Clan Delaware people.

References

1. "welhik". Lenape Talking Dictionary. Retrieved 2011-12-14.
2. "Heckewelder here does not give the strict meaning of hanne. The word in common use among Algonkin [i.e., Algonquian] tribes for river is sipu, and this includes the idea of 'a stream of flowing water'. But in the mountainous parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia sipu did not sufficiently convey the idea of a rapid stream, roaring down mountain gorges, and hanne takes its place to designate not a mere sipu, or flowing river, but a rapid mountain stream." Russell, Erret (1885). "Indian Geographical Names". The Magazine of Western History. 2 (1): 53–59. Retrieved 2011-12-14.
3. Alleghany, or as some prefer to write it, Allegheny,—the Algonkin name of the Ohio River, but now restricted to one of its branches,—is probably (Delaware) welhik-hanné or [oo]lik-hanné, 'the best (or, the fairest) river.' Welhik (as Zeisberger wrote it) is the inanimate form of the adjectival, meaning 'best,' 'most beautiful.' In his Vocabulary, Zeisberger gave this synthesis, with slight change of orthography, as "Wulach'neü" [or [oo]lakhanne[oo], as Eliot would have written it,] with the free translation, "a fine River, without Falls." The name was indeed more likely to belong to rivers 'without falls' or other obstruction to the passage of canoes, but its literal meaning is, as its composition shows, "best rapid-stream," or "finest rapid-stream;" "La Belle Riviere" of the French, and the Oue-yo´ or O hee´ yo Gä-hun´-dä, "good river" or "the beautiful river," of the Senecas. For this translation of the name we have very respectable authority,—that of Christian Frederick Post, a Moravian of Pennsylvania, who lived seventeen years with the Muhhekan Indians and was twice married among them, and whose knowledge of the Indian languages enabled him to render important services to the colony, as a negotiator with the Delawares and Shawanese of the Ohio, in the French war. In his "Journal from Philadelphia to the Ohio" in 1758, after mention of the 'Alleghenny' river, he says: "The Ohio, as it is called by the Sennecas. Alleghenny is the name of the same river in the Delaware language. Both words signify the fine or fair river." La Metairie, the notary of La Salle's expedition, "calls the Ohio, the Olighinsipou, or Aleghin; evidently an Algonkin name,"—as Dr. Shea remarks. Heckewelder says that the Delawares "still call the Allegany (Ohio) river, Alligéwi Sipu,"—"the river of the Alligewi" as he chooses to translate it. In one form, we have wulik-hannésipu, 'best rapid-stream long-river;' in the other, wuliké-sipu, 'best long-river.' Heckewelder's derivation of the name, on the authority of a Delaware legend, from the mythic 'Alligewi' or 'Talligewi,'—"a race of Indians said to have once inhabited that country," who, after great battles fought in pre-historic times, were driven from it by the all-conquering Delawares,—is of no value, unless supported by other testimony. Trumbull, J. Hammond (1870). The Composition of Indian Geographical Names. Hartford, Conn. pp. 13–14. Retrieved 2011-12-14.
4. Calvert County Guide states that it was the Puritans, who named it for a Native American word meaning "place where tobacco grows"
5. Maryland Online Encyclopedia Calvert County
6. Maryland: A Colonial History. p. 22
7. "Peco's Hydroelectric Station Marks 65th Anniversary -- 'A Symbol of Progress' in 1928 One of the World's Largest Power Projects".
8. Scharf, John Thomas (1879). History of Maryland from the Earliest Period to the Present Day. Baltimore, MD: John B. Piet. p. 137.
9. Runkle, Stephen A. Native American Waterbody and Place Names within the Susquehanna River Basin and Surrounding Subbasins Publication 229. Susquehanna River Basin Commission, September 2003.
10. Quesada-Embid, Mercedes (2004), Five Hundred Years on Five Thousand Acres: Human Attitudes and Land Use at Nassawango Creek, Native Americans of the Delmarva Peninsula, Salisbury, MD: Edward H. Nab Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture, retrieved 2008-08-26
11. "Ghosts of industrial heyday still haunt Baltimore's harbor, creeks". Chesapeake Bay Journal. Retrieved 2012-09-08.
12. "The Pocomoke River". Pocomoke River Events. Pocomoke City. 2006. Retrieved 2006-12-26.
13. cf. Ojibwe: Baadimaag-ziibi, from biidimaw "bring something to somebody" Freelang Ojibwe Dictionary
14. Legends of Loudoun: An account of the history and homes of a border county of Virginia's Northern Neck, Harrison Williams, p. 26.
15. cf. Odawa: ikagookaanitoo-ziibi "river that is abundant with geese" Freelang Ojibwe Dictionary
16. Bright (2004:469)
17. Kohn, Diana (November 2008). "Takoma Park at 125" (PDF). Takoma Voice. pp. 14–15. Retrieved 2013-01-03.
18. "tùkwsit". Lenape Talking Dictionary. Delaware Tribe of Indians Lenape Language Preservation Project. Retrieved February 3, 2015.
19. "Tuxedo". Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 2012-09-25.
20. Also shown as "Chisupioc" (by John Smith of Jamestown) and "Chisapeack", in Algonquian "Che" means "big" or "great", "sepi" means river, and the "oc" or "ok" ending indicated something (a village, in this case) "at" that feature. "Sepi" is also found in another placename of Algonquian origin, Mississippi. The name was soon transferred by the English from the big river at that site to the big bay. Stewart, George (1945). Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States. New York: Random House. p. 23.
21. Farenthold, David A. (2006-12-12). "A Dead Indian Language Is Brought Back to Life". The Washington Post. p. A1. Retrieved 2013-01-05.
22. Runkle, Stephen A. Native American Waterbody and Place Names within the Susquehanna River Basin and Surrounding Subbasins Publication 229. Susquehanna River Basin Commission, September 2003.
23. Quesada-Embid, Mercedes (2004), Five Hundred Years on Five Thousand Acres: Human Attitudes and Land Use at Nassawango Creek, Native Americans of the Delmarva Peninsula, Salisbury, MD: Edward H. Nab Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture, retrieved 2013-01-05
24. "Ghosts of industrial heyday still haunt Baltimore's harbor, creeks". Chesapeake Bay Journal. Retrieved 2013-01-05.