a very old joke

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

        And don't forget "Bogalusa" (Black Creek) from the immigrant whose
        horse got out of the barn, allegedly causing the immigrant to yell "He
        broke-a loose-a!"  Then there's "Mandyville" in Missouri (named for a
        postmaster's  daughter Amanda), allegedly from the plans of a local
        (immigrant) resident's daughter to marry a man the father disapproved of.
        The father insisted repeatedly: "Mandy vill *not* marry him!" The mother
        insisted equally repeatedly: "Mandy *vill* marry him." Hence: Mandyville.
          I also remember hearing about the place-name Wakenda (IIRC, Indian
        name for the  Great Spirit). A man was trying to get his ox to ford a
        stream, but the ox  was stubborn and didn't want to go. So the man kept
        shouting at  the ox: "Walk in dar." Hence: Wakenda.

        Gerald Cohen

> ----------
> From:   George Thompson,      Monday, January 30, 2006 12:04 PM
>
> "Authenticated Etymologies", New-York Daily Gazette, May 15, 1789, p. 2, col. 4 - p. 3, col. 1, copied from Poughkeepsie Journal.  A column
> of joke-etymologies, mostly of place names.
>
> This includes a story that a man, needing to think of a name for the province located north of Connecticut, asked a slave for suggestions; the slave was stumped too, and said "Massa Chuse It". I remember being told that joke by a classmate in grade-school -- a
> particularly obnoxious little jerk, and I knew better than to give any
> credit to his etymologies.
>
> This issue of the New-York Daily Gazette is available in the Early American Periodicals microfilms, if any of you are collectors of antique bogus etymologies.  Another was that Columbus chose the name
> America on a day when his crew was in a particularly jovial mood: "in A Merry Key" -- but I didn't hear this one from that kid. I haven't looked for the story in the database.
>
> GAT
>
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>
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>
>
>

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