Reader Response: A Critique of the Swenson/McCafferty Linguistic Analysis of The Word "Chicago"

In the etymological literature, only one writer identified a year for the earliest use in a text and on a map of the Chicago word. But Virgil J. Vogel had not gone back early enough in either text10or map."

My identifications of an earlier text and map led to my conclusion that "La Salle should be credited with popularizing the word and literally putting it on the map." The history cartography, and linguistics all come together to point in that direction.

Le Boulanger12 compiled a dictionary in the early French period. The dictionary is documentation that the word normally used for "skunk" was at times abnormally used for the smelly onion. In his dictionary, Le Boulanger wrote the French word for a kind of onion, as the entry. He then wrote the Indian word for this onion. And then, he inserted the word for skunk, indicating it could be used for the onions also. But when the word for skunk was used for the smelly onions, Le Boulanger noted it was "abusive." I think it is a misleading simplification to reinterpret Le Boulanger's word, as McCafferty does, as meaning "slang."

In opening his, "A Fresh Look at the Place Name Chicago," Michael McCafferty states his intention as one of dual purpose: "to round out the study of 'Chicago' by providing new, important historical linguistic information about this place name and to clean up some problems in the literature previously published on it." The new linguistic information, a newly discovered use of "8," tries to rescue the smelly onion theory by explaining why the final "-a" of the skunk/onions word was not written in the place name.

By way of introduction, McCafferty refers his readers to his footnote. It says: "For definitive guidelines that apply to research in Native American place names, see Floyd G. Lounsbury, lroc\uois Place-Names in the Champlain Valley."

It seems reasonable to assume MaCafferty's "Fresh Look at the Place Name Chicago," uses the highly esteemed Lounsbury as an authority for his own place name ideas. The reader might be erroneously led to believe that items from Lounsbury's definitive guidelines would be cited by McCafferty in his own place name arguments for why the smelly onion (Allium tricoccum) named the city.

He lays ground work for his conclusion by discussing the Indians' land and waterway naming practices. Then follows a summary, seemingly from Lounsbury. Native Americans had a penchant in their naming practices for communicating "geophysical, spiritual, biological, or ethnonymic information" as the most salient features of their practices. We are then moved to "water body names" as defined by "very important cultural items." We are given as an example the Vermilion River in Illinois. On its banks is found a mineral compound used for body painting, a "very important cultural item," a "vital, information-rich place name."14

Lounsbury had said nothing about this place name custom. Why this entire "vital cultural element" argument fails is found by way of the answer to the query, "Why name the place after the onions?" The Swenson/McCafferty smelly onion theory rests on the importance of this plant to the well being of the Indians and French. There is nothing in Joutel, Swenson's only source, however, to remotely suggest this. On the contrary, if there was an important resource that Joutel speaks highly of, it is maple syrup.