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

There are many loose ends in Chicago etymology, more than can here be mentioned. McCafferty says that Swenson based his onion place name theory on the Dictionary of Father Le Boulanger.33 This is hardly the case, and Le Boulanger makes no connection whatsoever between a place name and the smelly onion. Le Boulanger does not mention the Chicago word as a place name.

Swenson carefully words the following to give the impression that Father Gravier wrote about and documents the onion theory. Hardly. Swenson says,

The name Chicago is derived from the local Indian word Chicagoua for the native garlic plant (not onion) Allium tricoccum. This garlic (in French: ail sauvage) grew in abundance on the south end of Lake Michigan on the wooded banks of the extensive river system which bore the same name, chicagoua. Father Gravier, a thorough student of the local Miami language, introduced the spelling chicagoua, or chicagou8 [sic], in the 1690s, attempting to express the inflection which the Indians gave to the last syllable of the word.34

Father Gravier, in fact, is not known to have ever said anything or written about onions. Swenson's tendencies here to link falsely the onions to the place name is unfair to the unsuspecting reader. The editing blunder, overlooking the impossible spelling "chicagouS," merits severe criticism.

In my Newberry Library Colloquium in October 2001, "Chicago's Not an Onion," I pointed out that the original Chicago encompassed the fifty-miles from Lake Michigan to the Illinois River. That fact, based on maps and texts of the pre-1700 period, had never been mentioned in prior Chicago etymological discussion. I identified the Chicago word on an earlier map and in an earlier text than had been previously identified. I mentioned that a full-scale copy of this map did not exist in Chicago until I purchased a copy from the Harvard Library and donated it to the Chicago Historical Society. I identified the normal form of the word as La Salle's "Checagou." I also mentioned other aspects of threads of Chicago etymology, which are not the subject of this current paper, and will be save for some other venue.

The Swenson/McCafferty's smelly onion theory, teetering on its "Chicagoua" balance, is extremely unlikely and tumbles for more than a few reason:

1.) It is a place name that never in French colonial history appeared on a map.

2.) The "original" form claimed by McCafferty and Swenson issued from the pen of only one person in all of French Colonial history.

3.) The "convincing case" that McCafferty claims that Swenson made, that the place name came from the plant, on the "vital cultural item" model (a model not found in McCafferty's place name expert, Lounsbury), is a convincing case that has yet to be made.

4.) The claim of both Swenson and McCafferty, built on the authority of Father Gravier (the only one ever to write the place name "Chicagoua") leads us to infer that Gravier associated the smelly onions with the place name. Gravier did not.

5.) The claim that except for Father Gravier, in the entire history of New France, everyone was deficient in their language skills and linguistically challenged, strains credulity.