[Ads-l] Derivation of "Kentucky"

[Baker, John]

The OED states in its entry for "Kentucky," the state, that its etymology is "< the name of the river; the original meaning of this is uncertain."  However, an early reference to the name, published in the (Philadelphia) Pennsylvania Gazette on 10 May 1753 and later in other newspapers, and available online at http://www.newspapers.com/clip/1958665/a_place_called_kentucky/, makes no mention of the river:

"By Letters from Virginia, dated the 10th of April, we have the following Advice, viz. "That an armed Company of Indians, consisting of Ottowawas, and Connywagas, headed by one of the Six Nations, and a white Man, met with some Pennsylvania Traders, at a Place called Kentucky, about 150 Miles from the Shawnese Town, on this Side Allegheny River, and took eight Prisoners, five belonging to Mr. Croghan, the other three to Mr. Lowry, and with them Goods to the Value of upwards of Three Hundred Pounds.""

I'm not sure where the Shawnese Town is, but the Allegheny River is in western Pennsylvania.  It would appear, therefore, that in 1753 the term already referred to a place, and not to the one we know as Kentucky today, nor to the Kentucky River, which inescapably is in the central part of modern Kentucky.  This would seem to undercut the supposed derivation of "Kentucky" from the name of the river.

Famously, of course, many have supposed "Kentucky" to be from an Indian term meaning "dark and bloody ground," although that derivation finds little support in modern scholarship.  The mistaken derivation seems to come from a book by John Filson, The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke.  I don't see the book readily available online in its original 1784 version, but a summary published in The New-Jersey Magazine and Monthly Advertiser in Feb. 1787 stated as follows:

"The first white man that we have certain account of, who discovered this country, was one James M'Bride, who in company with others, passing down the Ohio, in 1754, landed at the mouth of Kentucke river. . . . From this period, it lay concealed till 1767, when John Finley and other, Indian traders, travelled over this fertile region, now called Kentucke, but then known to the Indians by the name of the dark and bloody ground, on account of the wars among  various tribes of Indians, about the possession of it."

Obviously the confusion of "Kentucke" with "dark and bloody ground," which is presented as an alternative title, was a readers' mistake.


John Baker

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org