awhile back i did a brief post on native names for major cities for the website Cohost. anyways, i’ve spent approximately the past week assembling place names for a much more comprehensive map–as of writing, more than 1,000 individual points from approximately 60 different sources are listed–and you can find that at the submission link here.
this is what i’m calling v. 0.1 of this project and pretty much the moment this post goes up i’ll be back to adding new names. because this is such a large project i’ve only gotten around to a handful of states in great detail—but rest assured, a lot more is coming. the next big part of the map in progress is the Ojibwe sphere of influence which should knock out most of the Great Lakes area.
any errors or corrections you happen to notice are appreciated
This is really cool! I’m in Eastern Canada and a lot of my favourite place names around here have Indigenous origins (in my neck of the woods, mostly Mi’kmaq words butchered into French and occasionally further butchered into English).
One example is Bouctouche, from the Mi’kmaq Tjipogtotjg meaning “Great little harbour”. Contrast with nearby Richibucto, from French Richibouctou which is itself from Mi’kmaq Elsipogtog (“river of fire”).