List of Maryland placenames of Native American origin

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

The following list includes settlements, geographic features, and political subdivisions of Maryland whose names are derived from Native American languages.

Listings

Counties

• Allegany County - From the Lenape word welhik hane^[1][2][3]
• 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.

Settlements

• 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.^[4]
• Conowingo - Conowingo is a Susquehannock word for "at the rapids".^[5]
• 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.^[6] 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]";^[7] 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").^[8]
• North Potomac
• Patapsco - the name Patapsco is derived from pota-psk-ut, which translates to "backwater" or "tide covered with froth" in Algonquian dialect.^[9]
• Patuxent - named for the Patuxent people.
• Piscataway - named for the Piscataway tribe.
• Pocomoke City - "Pocomoke" locally /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.^[10]
• 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".^[11] The natives called the river above the falls Cohongarooton,^[12] translated as "river of geese",^[13] 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'.^[14] 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'.^[15]
• Tuxedo - Tuxedo may derive from the Lenape epithet Tùkwsit 'the Wolf Clans', or from Munsee Delaware p'tuck-sepo 'crooked river'.^[16][17]
• 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,"

Bodies of water

• 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.^[18] 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."^[19]
• Nassawango Creek - older variations on the same name include Nassanongo, Naseongo, Nassiongo, and Nassiungo meaning "[ground] between [the streams]";^[20] 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").^[21]
• Patapsco River - the name "Patapsco" is derived from pota-psk-ut, which translates to "backwater" or "tide covered with froth" in Algonquian dialect.^[22]
• 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

References

Citations

1. "welhik". Lenape Talking Dictionary. Archived from the original on 2012-09-11. Retrieved 2011-12-14.
2. Russell, Erret (1885). "Indian Geographical Names". The Magazine of Western History. 2 (1): 53–59. Retrieved 2011-12-14.
3. Trumbull, J. Hammond (1870). The Composition of Indian Geographical Names. Hartford, Conn. pp. 13–14. Retrieved 2011-12-14.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
4. Maryland: A Colonial History. p. 22
5. "Peco's Hydroelectric Station Marks 65th Anniversary -- 'A Symbol of Progress' in 1928 One of the World's Largest Power Projects".
6. Scharf, John Thomas (1879). History of Maryland from the Earliest Period to the Present Day. Baltimore, MD: John B. Piet. pp. 137. matapeake.
7. 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.
8. 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
9. "Ghosts of industrial heyday still haunt Baltimore's harbor, creeks". Chesapeake Bay Journal. Retrieved 2012-09-08.
10. "The Pocomoke River". Pocomoke River Events. Pocomoke City. 2006. Retrieved 2006-12-26.^{[dead link]}
11. cf. Ojibwe: Baadimaag-ziibi, from biidimaw "bring something to somebody" Freelang Ojibwe Dictionary
12. Legends of Loudoun: An account of the history and homes of a border county of Virginia's Northern Neck, Harrison Williams, p. 26.
13. cf. Odawa: ikagookaanitoo-ziibi "river that is abundant with geese" Freelang Ojibwe Dictionary
14. Bright (2004:469)
15. Kohn, Diana (November 2008). "Takoma Park at 125" (PDF). Takoma Voice. pp. 14–15. Retrieved 2013-01-03.
16. . Lenape Talking Dictionary. Delaware Tribe of Indians Lenape Language Preservation Project. Archived from the original on February 3, 2015. Retrieved February 3, 2015.
17. "Tuxedo". Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 2012-09-25.
18. 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.
19. Farenthold, David A. (2006-12-12). "A Dead Indian Language Is Brought Back to Life". The Washington Post. p. A1. Retrieved 2013-01-05.
20. 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.
21. 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
22. "Ghosts of industrial heyday still haunt Baltimore's harbor, creeks". Chesapeake Bay Journal. Retrieved 2013-01-05.

Sources

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