American Indian Place Names

Many places throughout the United States of America take their names from the languages of the indigenous Native American/American Indian tribes that first lived there. Settlements, geographic features, and later towns often took the Indian name - or more often, an Anglicized or misspelled version of it.

In my own home state of New Jersey, there are many places that take names from the Delaware, Lenape and other tribal names that were recorded.

Some places just sound strange enough that you would guess they were not English.

Ho-Ho-Kus, pronounced ho-HO-kus, is a borough located in Bergen County first settled in 1698. The meaning behind the town name is unclear. Origin stories vary but on the borough's own website, the most accepted origin is that Ho-Ho-Kus was a contraction of Mehokhokus or Mah-Ho-Ho-Kus, a native Delaware Indian term meaning “the Red Cedar,” as many older native terms beginning in “me” or “mah” lost their first syllables over time. The word is also a native term for running water, is similar to the word “hoccus” meaning fox and sounds similar to “Chihohokies,” the name of a native tribe whose chief lived in the area.

A few other examples:

Cinnaminson: Derived from the Lenni-Lenape word “senamensing” meaning “sweet water.”
Moonachie: Legend is that Moonachie was named after Chief Monaghie, a member of the Iroquois who inhabited the local cedar forests.

Hackensack: Derived from Lenni-Lenape word “Achsinnigeu-haki” meaning “stony ground.”

Paramus: The Lenape language word for the area, Peremessing, meant that it had an abundant population of wild turkey, was anglicized to become the word "Paramus"

Metuchen: Named for the Raritan Indian Chief, Matouchin, who lived in the area in the late 17th century.

Port, Starboard and sailing terms

Stern-mounted steering oar of a Roman Rhine Boat, 1st century AD

I was looking up some terms that are used in sailing but also used in common speech. Most landlubbers know bow and aft as the front and back of a boat. I was looking at the term tacking - as in taking a new tack on an issue. Tacking (or coming about) is a sailing maneuver by which a sailing vessel (which is sailing approximately into the wind) turns its bow into the wind so that the direction from which the wind blows changes from one side to the other.

That term led me to search for a few other sailing terms including the commonly heard port and starboard. Most people know they mean left and right respectively, but what is the origin of these terms.

Both are very old terms. Starboard comes from early boating even before ships had rudders. (Sidenote: rudder itself comes from Old English rōther ‘paddle, oar’ and Dutch roer, as well as the German ruder.) They were steered by use of a specialized steering oar. The oarsman was generally right-handed sailors and so the oar was on the right side. The word itself comes from Old English steorbord, literally meaning the side on which the ship is steered.

The earlier form of "port" in nautical use is larboard, from Middle-English ladebord and earlier in Old English as bæcbord. The origin of lade seems less determined but it is generally connected with the verb lade (to load) because it referred to the side on which cargo was loaded. I have read that the term larboard could be too easily misheard on the high seas as starboard and so port replaced it. It seem logical because port matches the practice of sailors mooring ships on the left side at ports in order to prevent the steering oar from being crushed.