Aux Arcs

[Bruce Hunter]

From: "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Reminds me--is the derivation of "Ozark" from "Aux Arcs", supposedly applied to the Quapaw Indians because they used bows, generally accepted as valid, or just fanciful?  Is there an alternative (more boring but better supported) theory?  The OED takes us as far as the "Aux Arcs" but doesn't bring in the idea that they were bowed, leaving the name looking like a folk etymology in French.  The AHD doesn't even hazard an etymology, maybe a general practice it observes for proper names.
> Larry

Here's an alternate for you...

Excerpt from A Living History of the Ozarks, by Phyllis Rossiter
1992, Pelican Publishing Co.; ISBN 0-88289-935-X and 0-88289-801-9 (pbk.)

An Explanation of the Origin of the Name, Ozarks

"... most modern scholars agree that the name Ozarks originated as an English-speaking corruption of the French prepositional phrase, aux arcs (pronounced ohs ark), a shortened form meaning "toward or to Arkansas" or "to Arkansas Post," a fur-trading post. Arkansas was also the name of an Indian tribe in the Lower Mississippi region, and aux arcs could also refer to those Indians and by extension to the mountains where they lived.

An English traveler by the name of John Bradbury first used the name Ozark in print in 1809. The term Ozark Mountains first appeared on a map by government explorer S. H. Long in 1815, and historians generally agree that Major Long officialized the distinctive name."

HTH,
Bruce Hunter