Tolo, Oregon: named for Yolo, California

[Scott Tyler]

A tangential comment.
I have a good friend on Mercer Island, WA who
mentioned that the MI High School was having their yearly Tolo dance.
Scott
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Robertson" <ddr11 at COLUMBIA.EDU>
To: <CHINOOK at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2005 11:29 AM
Subject: Tolo, Oregon: named for Yolo, California


> Hi,
>
> Some of you will remember my interest in the word "tolo" from Jargon, 
> which
> made its way into the English of western Washington as the name of a Sadie
> Hawkins dance.
>
> In the course of my research on that, I found one factoid that I couldn't
> cram into my tolo paper, so here it is for your amusement.
>
> The town of Tolo, in southwest Oregon, apparently doesn't (intentionally)
> have a Chinook Jargon name.  The original settler there had named it for
> his beloved Yolo, California.  However, government authorities 
> persistently
> misread the name as Tolo, which stuck.
>
> What hasn't been established, but seems likely, is that somebody who knew
> Jargon might have assumed the intention was to name the town "success" in
> that language.  That would have been a typical pioneer-era idea.
>
> Cheers,
>
> --Dave R
>
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> 

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