"Rackensack" (=Arkansas) query

[Donald M Lance]

It is indeed an anagrammatic play on the name Arkansas.  Some folk singers I
know do a number titled "Down in the Rakansak" and comment that it is a play
on words and refers to the state.  I'll ask them what they know about its
origin.
DMLance

> From: Mark A Mandel <mam at THEWORLD.COM>
> Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2002 17:36:48 -0500
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: "Rackensack" (=Arkansas) query
>
> On Sat, 2 Feb 2002, Gerald Cohen wrote:
>
> #    I've received the following request about "Rackensack"  from the
> #editor of _Ozarks Mountaineer_. Would anyone be able to help?
>
> [...]
>
> #>>...a few months ago in the "ozarks mountaineer" was the mention
> #>>that arkansas at one time was referred to as "rackensack" could you
> #>>please give details to this referral?...
>
> I know nothing about the name, but here's an unabashed WAG (wild-ass
> guess). It *looks* like a near-anagram of "Arkansas" :
> ARK-AN-SAS
> replace the 2nd S with a 2nd K and shuffle slightly
> RAK-AN-SAK
> -- which might have originated either as an actual
> misreading/misspeaking of the name or as a mock mistake of the kind a
> proverbial uneducated "hillbilly" might make. Again, this is pure
> uninformed speculation.
>
> -- Mark A. Mandel
> Linguist at Large
>