The 2010 Geographic Names Conference
of the
Council of Geographic Names Authorities
in the United States
 
Was hosted by the Missouri Board on Geographic Names
Jane Messenger & Chris Barnett, conference co-chair

October 5--9

At the
University Plaza Hotel & Convention Center
Springfield, MO

CONFERENCE THEME

SINKS, BALDS, AND HOLLOWS

 
The extensive planning by the MOBGN was evident with a well run conference. Early in the process the Executive Secretary was consulted and invited to be a major player in the planning; he took part in three on-site planning sessions and numerous e-mail and phone calls. Every session ran smoothly and on time. This is an important matter. The addition of the NHD workshop was well worth the effort by providing insight for both the NHD stewards and Geographic Names folks. The Keynote speaker was a delight. The academic papers were balanced and well presented. It was a bonus to have a graduate student come in to present his research. Andre and Chris provided a wonderful Banquet presentation. All in all the conference was a success both on content and financially. Most presentations have been or will be placed on the COGNA web site.

Program of Events

TUESDAY
10:00 – 5:00  Registration

2:00 –5:00  MOBGN meeting – Harolston vs. Nardeton Creek and other variants plus  the 30+ proposed new St. Louis stream names.

The break included sampling of items in the MOBGN cookbook
 
6:00 – 9:00
Reception – with welcomes by Dana Maugans, Springfield Convention Visitor Bureau and Dan Chiles, Springfield Mayor Pro Tem Dan Chiles

WEDNESDAY
8:30 – 8:45  Opening housekeeping remarks - Chris Barnett

8:45 – 9:00  Opening remarks - Wayne Furr

9:00 – 10:00  Keynote Speaker Edd Akers, Representative from Silver Dollar City
 
10:30 – Noon  State-Federal Roundtable - Chris Barnett, moderator

The State/Federal Roundtable session is one of the most important session of the conference.  Topics are often linked to the Principles, Policies, and Procedures but consideration should be much broader with subjects for GNIS and other matters of applied toponymy that delegates and attendees would deem of interest or useful.

1:30 – 3:00  NHD/GNIS (National Hydrography Dataset) Steward presentations - Bill Sneed. moderator

Katy Hattenhauer, Arkansas: Impact of GNIS on NHD
Craig Coutros, New Jersey: NHD / GNIS Stewardship in New Jersey
Bruce Fisher, Oregon: Oregon NHD - GNIS Project
Paul Kimsey, USGS-NHD: Names in NHD: GazVector Integrated Database
Karen Hanson, USGS-WBD: Integration of the Watershed Boundary Dataset (WBD) Hydrologic Unit Names and Codes within the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS)
 
3:30 – 5:00  NHD/GNIS panel discussion, Q&A session - Bill Sneed, moderator

Katy Hattenhauer, Arkansas
Craig Coutros, New Jersey
Bruce Fisher, Oregon
Paul Kimsey, USGS-NHD
Karen Hanson, USGS-WBD
Maria McCormick. USGS-NHD
Lou Yost, US-BGN
Jenny Runyon, US-BGN

7:00 – 8:30  COGNA Business meeting - Wayne Furr presiding
All COGNA voting member

THURSDAY
8:30 – 10:00  State Reports - Wayne Furr, moderator

10:00 – Noon  DNC meeting with staff reports
 
Noon – 1:30  Lunch at The Tower Club

1:30 – 4:30  DNC meeting
 
FRIDAY
8:30 – 9:00  Overview of Montana’s Geographic Names Web Page - Gerry Daumiller

9:00 – 9:30  Mark Twain and Missouri Place Names - Henry Sweets     An examination of Mark Twain's travels through Missouri, his use of real place names in his literature, real places renamed with fictional names, fictional places Mark Twain located in Missouri, and Missouri towns Twain moved to other states in his writings.

9:30 – 10:00  Stream Metrics, Generic Place Names, and Geography - Janet H. Gritzner, Department of Geography, South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD 57007

     Geographers in the 1950s launched ambitious studies of toponymic generics in the United States. Wilbur Zelinsky surveyed distributions of selected generic place names over most of the Northeastern US. Meredith Burrill examined toponymic generics for physical features across the US. Robert West studied the term bayou in time and space, while E. Joan Wilson Miller looked at generics in folk naming of the Arkansas Ozarks. Work inevitably involved tedious manual recording of place name information. With completion of 1:24,000 mapping, advent of the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) and the coming of age of GIS technologies, abilities to explore specifics and generics of place names have been substantially extended and enhanced. Questions posed by previous studies can be answered more fully, while other questions posed.
     This paper explores the interrelationship of stream metrics, generic place names, and geography. Streams are the most named feature in the US, but are all streams named, if not how many and where? Are place name generics merely historic artifacts or do they now as they may have in the past serve a function? What do generics tell us about the physical qualities of streams, naming culture, and geographic location? Metrics of stream length, flow characteristics and position in the stream hierarchy are examined. Naming patterns and diversity in naming are analyzed and mapped. Base data are GNIS and National Hydrology Dataset (NHD) information. The former were assembled into US datasets of stream names and latter, data for watersheds in a variety of landform regions.
Keywords: place-names, streams, GIS, culture
 
10:30 –11:00  Proposal for a Thesis: A Case Study in Toponymy: The Place Names of the Tewa Basin of Northern New Mexico" - Roberto Valdez, Geography Graduate Student* - University of New Mexico
    This presentation concerns a proposal for a thesis whose purpose is to compare and contrast place names of a geographic area that are in three languages. Its setting is north-central New Mexico in a geographical region defined as the "Tewa Basin". The Tewa are a cultural group of American Indians categorized as the Pueblo. The three primary languages that appear in this region today are Tewa, the New Mexico Spanish dialect, and American English.
     The project is evolving to catalog names for topographical features using a collection acquired from personal knowledge; informant interviews, documented sources, and names provided by the database of the US Bureau on Geographic Names. The project will sort the names into three socio-linguistic categories and associate any documentation or oral tradition with them. A tentative hypothesis is presented that the Tewa and Hispanic New Mexican societies satisfied their consumptive needs with local resources and developed cultures reflecting a dependence upon, stewardship of, and influence by their environment. The priorities that these cultures hold to may have been tagged to geographic features with their respective naming schemes. The American English place names in the Tewa Basin may be expected to contrast sharply with the former two, reflecting a low dependence on local spaces, transitory place attachment, and employ the most schemes to manage land remotely (such as the Public Lands Survey System).
     Google Earth mapping service software is being employed to "place" the names, assist in the sorting process, and view geographic patterns. The project has among its objectives to rescue names overlooked in the National Map, correct names with errors, and submit "new" names into the database of the Geographic Names Information System.
     Keywords: toponymy, geographic names, new mexico, human environment interaction, place names, cultural landscape, cultural heritage, cultural worldview
 
11:00 – 11:30  Ozark/Ozarks: Evolution of a Vernacular Name - Lynn Morrow
     The regional term, Ozark(s), began in the eighteenth century with multiple meanings.  More than two centuries later, the term has evolved from references to a specific place, people, and a river to an entire region.  An early geographic designation encompassed a square mileage much larger than modern geographic understandings.
     Lynn Morrow will provide an overview of how this adjective and noun has been used since its introduction into the colonial Indian trade in the Arkansas Delta.  Federal government explorers placed the term on an American map in the 1820s that launched a generation-long diffusion of the name before it became common in the 1850s as a descriptor for the uplands.
      After the Civil War, Missouri geologists and geographers applied the term to their professional work.  Journalists picked up the term and it gained significant currency in Missouri’s mineral histories.  Victorian tourists helped make the term public as travelers sought recreation at karst areas in the Ozarks.  By the 1920s, Missouri scholars Curtis Marbut and Carl Sauer had placed the term irrevocably in the professional and public domain.  Since then its use has exploded in promotional work, especially the tourist industry.
 
11:30 – Noon  Toponymic Studies in the U.S. as Seen in the Journal Names - Tom Gasque
     COGNA and the American Name Society (ANS) have been closely allied for years, and many regular COGNA attendees have been officers in ANS.  The founders of ANS in 1951 were mostly interested in studying place names, although other naming interests were included, especially personal names and names in literature.  The official journal of ANS is called Names: A Journal of Onomastics, and over the nearly sixty years of its existence slightly more than 25 percent of its 1,119 articles have been devoted to the study of U.S. place names, while the rest have focused on other kinds of names or place names in other parts of the world.  Some of the U.S. studies have been of names of a particular area, such as a county or a state, and others have been more general, such as studies of place name generics.  There have also been studies of naming patterns, of pronunciation, and of name changes.  The work of the Domestic Names Committee of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names has received the attention of several articles, and in the early days there was a regular bibliography of place-name studies in the United States, but none has appeared since the early 1990s.  In recent times, the number of place name studies has declined for undetermined reasons.  What is needed is a new interest in both the theoretical and practical study of the millions of names that exist in this country.

1:30 – 2:00  The Genesis of a Place Name: Jay, Maine; Are the Historians Wrong or is it Just a Big Coincidence? - Michael Fournier
     In 1912 the Rev. Benjamin Lawrence wrote the history of Jay, Maine. He stated that when Phipps Canada, Massachusetts, District of Maine incorporated on February 26, 1795 it took the name Jay to honor John Jay. Jay was the United States’ first Chief Supreme Court Justice who, in November 1794, successfully negotiated the Treaty of London (also known as the Jay Treaty). Two later historians, Helen Caldwell Cushman in the book “Horizons Unlimited: A History of Jay” (1967) and Virginia Plaisted Moulton in the book “A History of Jay, Maine from its settlement as Phips Canada” (1995), repeat Rev. Lawrence’s interpretation.

     Cartographers and surveyors tell a different story, however. In a map produced around 1720 for the Pejepscot Proprietors (a land speculation company), at the point in the Androscoggin River where its flow turns from west-east to north-south in the present town of Jay, the point of land at the bend is labeled Jay Point. Other contemporaneous documentation and oral history indicates that this area obtained the name ‘Jay’ long before the birth of John Jay.

     This presentation will examine the evidence available which appears to refute Rev. Lawrence’s assertion as to the origins of the name.  It will also make the argument that without an examination of the geographic components, errors can and will be made in interpreting historical events.
 
2:00 – 2:30  Confluence and Crossroads:  Historical Perspectives of Missouri - Frank Nickell

2:30 – 3:00  Can the Alternate Name Principle be Applied to Indigenous Toponymy? - André  Lapierre
     The notion of Officially Designated Alternate Name was developed by the Ontario Geographic Names Board (OGNB) in the early 1990s in order to respond to the requirements of the French Language Services Act. Field work revealed that in predominantly French-speaking areas, official names were not being used. In their place, either translations or substitutions were found to be in local usage, thus creating a dual-naming situation that needed to be addressed. In accordance with UNGEGN resolutions, an Alternate Name policy was devised to provide official recognition to these French Names in specified contexts. A similar issue is now developing with regard to Aboriginal toponymy. The OGNB is exploring the possibility of applying the Alternate Name Policy to a set of Ojibwe names in Pikangikum, a First Nation community in northwestern Ontario. This paper explores the challenges involved and discusses preliminary results of the project.
 
3:30 – 4:00  Missouri Place Names - Henry Sweets
    A look at the origin of many Missouri place names, focusing on classical names, borrowed names, and contrived names.

4:00 – 4:15  Touting COGNA 2011 conference - Renee Lewis

4:15 – 4:30  Wrap-up - Chris Barnett & Wayne Furr

6:00 – 9:00
Banquet with Presentation – "French Names in Missouri and Missouri Pronunciation" - André  Lapierre & Chris Barnett

SATURDAY
8:00 – 5:30  TOUR
     The tour has many interesting places with interesting stories and several names issues that will keep your interest. Below are a few of the stops but only a hint of what to expect.

Oval Sink – this is a sink that does become a spring at times

Wilson's Creek National Battlefield

Driving through Ozark to see the mill; discussing some of the names seen along the route and their significance/history; discussing the geology and formation names mentioning type localities; if traffic isn’t too bad and we have time we'll go through downtown Branson via the Landing and see the old bridge structure.

Murder Rock Golf Course Club House buffet luncheon. Beautiful view of the top of the Ozarks.

Table Rock overlook –While on the way talk about School of the Ozarks, Baird Mountain and the Baird Mountain Limestone

Inspiration Tower where we get a 360o view of the Ozarks and can see into Arkansas

Yocum Pond mentioning some of the Shepherd of the Hills sites we see on the way.

Riverdale going through Reeds Spring, Reeds Spring Junction.