moose/orignal

[Aron Faegre]

Of course outsiders always say Ory GON while insiders say OR e gn ??????

Mike Cleven wrote:

> 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....