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Inside Out

What’s in a name?

Jeanne Sager
Posted 1/25/22

When a local radio station shared a list of local towns with the “ugliest sounding names,” I couldn’t help but cringe.

Many names on the list come from Native American words or …

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Inside Out

What’s in a name?

Posted

When a local radio station shared a list of local towns with the “ugliest sounding names,” I couldn’t help but cringe.

Many names on the list come from Native American words or people’s names.

Do they sound different from many words we use in a predominantly English speaking modern society? Sure.

Does your inner 12-year-old giggle at names like Coxsackie or Shawangunk? Absolutely.

But are the names of our towns a key to the history that binds us to the places we love? Yup, that too.

I’ll cop to the fact that studying the etymology of local town names is a rather niche hobby. OK, a VERY niche hobby.

It takes someone with an inordinate love of language and history both to take the time.

Thank goodness for local historians who have already done that work for us.

Think Callicoon sounds seriously silly?

Our historians tell us Dutch hunters found the area to be brimming with plenty of turkey to eat, putting the name “Kollikoonkill,” meaning “Wild Turkey Creek,” in perspective.

Just up the road is Cochecton, a name that comes from “Cushetunk,” a Leni-Lenape word meaning “low land.”

What about Wurtsboro, one of those “ugly” town names to make the list?

Residents can thank two brothers with the last name Wurts for deciding on their section of New York to create the start of a canal — the D&H Canal — for giving them a place to live, and a name for it too.

They’re no Middletown or even Boring (that’s in Oregon).

But they’re so much more beautiful once you get to know them.

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