What's In A Name?

That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet-Shakespeare

Maybe it was because I was born in Japan and traveled almost 7,000 miles by plane to my parents’ homeland in the US before I was one, but I’ve moved a lot in my 54 years. My parents were going back to their homeland, but I was going to a new place. I used to think there was something wrong with me for not wanting to settle, but then I came to see my longing to wander had been with me from the very beginning, was maybe even my destiny.

Even the places where I’ve logged the most years-Block Island, RI and Washington, DC-I lived in dozens of locales, shifting from tower apartment to basement floor, from barns to boats to condos, cottages to mansions, inn basements to attic eyries. There were even some tents and a school bus in my peregrinations . I always thought I had to move for economic reasons, but now I wonder if I wasn’t moved around city and island on unseen currents like a white fluff of milkweed trying to seed in as many places as it could in order to become food for butterflies. Maybe those places needed me.

In 1994, I first came to Hawai’i Island, The Big Island, settling for a time in Waipi’o Valley where the land took me in as family, and where a family of the land showed me what it was like to be rooted in a place for centuries. At the time it was so alien I didn’t know what I was even witnessing.

Waipi’o was the first place I became aware of the power and significance of place names, and of how a human culture in alignment with nature would choose names that reflected the objective of the rivers, rocks, valleys, types of rain, waves, currents, birds, fish and streams. By objective I mean the highest potential, the definition I received in a recent pua’aehuehu workshop with Ke’oni Hanalei of Pohala Hawaiian Botanicals. The workshop was on the fern Wā’wae’iole, Divine Emotional Acceptance, and we were told that Divine Acceptance means to be in alignment with one’s objective-one’s highest potential. The Hawaiians were so connected to their surroundings they were aware of natures’ objectives and named its manifestations in the physical world accordingly, creating connection with the places by making them feel truly seen and reminding humans of those objectives every time they said the names.

Waipi’o, if you’re wondering, means “curved water.” It’s highest potential is to be a place where water falls from clouds that break on the valley’s rim to pour down gulches, picking up knowledge from the sacred ferns and maile, shapeshifting when they reach level ground into streams like capillaries transpiring blood, oxygen and nutrients to our organs; rich with stories the streams converged in a river that moved relentlessly like a fat brown eel toward the breaking ocean waves. Waipi’o contains the truth of existence in its name-water flows like spiraling DNA inside us. The ever present sound of water a serpent song reminding us of humanity’s collective potential to realize our divinity through the Iwi Kuamo’o, the spinal cord. If the river is undammed, the cerebrospinal fluid eventually drips down infusing the human avatar with direct experience of divinity. If the river is dammed, it might not happen. It will certainly be harder. Many of the place names in American culture are like those dammed rivers, desiccated arroyos who haven’t seen a flash flood since the conquistadors laid claim to them.

Names are important, my friends. Naming, in fact, may be the primary collective objective of humans. Who else names things? Who else is blessed with speech in the form of these combinations of sounds we call words, so often disparaged and deemed inadequate by a culture that has lost touch with its highest potential and renounced the gifts of blessing and praise?

In pondering these ideas, I began to mentally name all the places I’ve lived and thought I’d write them down here as a kind of autobiography, along with any information I have about the names’ sources or etymology. I’m not going to explain the names this week. My invitation to you is to make the connections, or lack of, between the names and their places and infer how that may be affecting human consciousness and how we view ourselves in relation to the non-human beings who also inhabit Earth. I also invite you to begin to look at your own places and the names you use to create relationship with place. Next week I will dive into the implications of the names and how their changes have affected modern humans. Part 3 of this essay will explore possible solutions to restore us all, human and nonhuman to our highest potential by aligning us with our objective.

Japan: Malayan or Chinese origin. Means “The Land of the Rising Sun.”

Connecticut: Algonquin, “land on the long tidal river.”

Clinton: English toponymic surname, indicating one's ancestors came from English places called Glympton or Glinton.

Paris: The name Paris is derived from its early inhabitants, a tribe called the Parisii, a Gallic drive from the Iron Age and Roman period.

France: Latin name used by the Frankis Clovis the Merovingian when he conquered the area we know as France after the fall of Rome.

Washington, DC: English. Named for Revolutionary War hero and first American President, George Washington.

District of Columbia: English. Named for Christopher Columbus, used as a patriotic reference during the Revolutionary War.

Block Island: Anglicized version of “Adrian’s Eylandt, claimed by Dutch explorer Adrian Block who sailed past the island in the 16th century.

Manisses: Narragansett, “Island of the Little God,” “Manitou’s Little Island.” The original name for Block Island. Manitou was the name for the Creator.

Waipi'o Valley: Hawaiian, “curved water,” “the land of curving water.”

Santa Fe: Spanish, “holy faith.” Named by Spanish Governor Don Pedro de Peralta, in honor of St. Francis of Assisi. Was originally Oga Po'geh, Tewa, meaning “White Shell Water Place.”

Colorado, Spanish, “colored red.” Named for the red sandstone of the region.

Breckenridge, named for American prospector Thomas Breckenridge.

Vermont: French, “green mountain,” name given by French settler Samuel de Champlain.

New Orleans: English/French. Named for the French regent the Duke of Orleans. Earlier name was Tchoupitoulas, Choctaw, meaning “river people.”

San Francisco: Spanish. Named by Spanish colonists for St. Francis of Assisi. Original Spanish name was "Yerba Buena” for the abundant herb found in the area. I could not find name used by indigenous Yelamu for their land.

Providence: English. Name bestowed one and purchased by Roger Williams from the Narragansett in thanks to God for protecting him during his exile from Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Newport: name given by English colonizers to area previously known as Aquidneck by the Narragansett, meaning “floating land mass” or “island.” Center of slave trade in early colonial America.

Rhode Island: Anglicized version of Dutch “Roodt Eylandt,” meaning “red island.” Name was bestowed by explorer Adrian Block in reference to the red clay shores.

Captain Cook: area on Hawai’i island named for English explorer Captain James Cook. Hawaiian name was Ka’awaloa, “the long, distant awa,” “the long-standing place,” in reference to the geographical features of the land.

Kealekekua: Hawaiian, “pathway of the gods.”

Mexico: Nahuatl, “place of the Mexica,” nomadic people who found their way into the Valley of Mexico from a mythical northern land called Aztlán

Tepoztlán: Nahuatl, "place of abundant copper" or "place of the broken rocks."

Tulum: Yucatec, “wall or fence.” Earlier Mayan name was Zama, “dawn.”

Bacalar: Spanish adaptation of “bʼak halal,” meaning "surrounded by reeds.”

Puna: Hawaiian, “spring.” (Of water. My current home.)

I also have a list of street names that is quite interesting, but I am going to forego sharing those so as not to overwhelm you and me with what could really be a book-length project. Perhaps I will write that book someday! In the meantime I am focusing on the one that’s already completed in preparation for publication.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned next week for Part 2 of this exploration of place names. I’d love to hear what you discover about your own.

Kō aloha la ea,

concentrate on love by way of the light,

Jen

Photo by Rampal Singh on Unsplash