moose/orignal

[Mike Cleven]

Aron Faegre wrote:
>
> Klahowya Yann,
>
> Klonas wake siah copa Wawa.  Have I got one for you!   The origin of the
> word 'Oregon' has not been pinned down last I heard.  Lewis McArthur's
> classic 'Oregon Geographic Names' admits as much and spins around a couple
> ideas, without much success.  It does say: 'We believe it probable that the
> name Oregon arose out of some circumstances connected with western
> explorations of the French' (pp.640), but I don't see that he ever tries out
> Orignal!  If you've ever seen a herd of Oregon elk, you should (and still
> can) -- they are impressive.  Not a bad animal to name a region after. What
> do you think?  Now for an initiative to rename the state 'Moolack'?

That would be OK if the nasal 'g' in orignal had any connection with the
hard 'g' in Oregon.  The accounts I've read centre on a misspelling of a
tributary of the upper Mississippi and/or confusion with the existence
of Lake Winnipeg or another body of water or river to the northwest of
the Mississippi headwaters; "riviere de l'ouragon" appearing
speculatively on one map; "ouragon" here meaning "raging wind", perhaps
a reference to the waters of the Manitoba lakes or of the large flowing
rivers west of the there; I've never been able to find that as a
dictionary-defined French word, so it, too, may be of
Metis-native/French origin.  When the voyageurs came down the Columbia,
supposedly the roaring winds of the Gorge brought "l'ouragon" to
mind......someone (maybe Jeff Kopp) sent me a historical circular on
this published by the State of Oregon.  The basic idea is that the word
referred to a large river with lots of wind....this could just as easily
have been the Bow or Missouri, of course....