Place names of foreign origin in garbled form

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 6 Sep 2006, shokooh Ingham wrote:
> Interesting about the Omaha sounding place names in English.  You find
> that also in the Gulf (Persian not Mexican) countries.  ...

My language was ambiguous.  I was thinking about places like Skunk Hollow
Road - namesake of the Skunk Hollow Singers, and a road through Macy named
by Omahas - I should even remember the name of the name giver, but I
don't.  Skunk Hollow Road is named after a locale in Dogpatch of comic
pages fame.

Or ... uh ... 48 ... Hill?  I'm not sure I have the number of the kind of
place right there.  It's a place named after a dance, I know, and I think
the number there changes with time, too.  It's a pan-Plains thing, I
think.  There are various folks explanations, but I once read that it was
probably a borrowing from English tent-show nomenclature, e.g., "Review of
'48."

Or the Million Dollar Hill (grade on the highway outside of town).

I just meant that the basis of these English language names was in Omaha
culture and history, and often also in the Omaha sense of humor.  It was
in that sense that I meant that they were characteristically Omaha, though
English in form.

More venerable and closer to what you understood would be the town of
Rosalie.  Folks explained that it was named for a lady named Dhuzadhi - a
member of the LaFlesche family, I believe, though the details escape me at
the moment - and that Rosalie was just the English version of her name.
I was a bit skeptical at the time, but I think they were right.  I hadn't
realized at that point that certain French names - mostly with common
English equivalents to confuse matters - had become Omaha personal names
through the merger of the Omaha metis population with the Omaha tribe.  I
actually suspect now that this may account for the lack of attested Omaha
names for some of the better known metis figures.  Very likely that had
Omaha names in most cases, but these were displaced by their metis names,
which were, essentially, perceived as Omaha.