I’m coming up with a new Wikipedia page, this one about town names that have certain derivations. Right now, the page is in my sandbox area, which is an area each editor has to develop or experiment with new pages. As you can see, the title is
List of placenames derived from acronyms, anagrams and acrostics
Originally, this was only going to be about acrostics (the ones there are not technically acrostics, but it was the closest word I could come up with). I’m fairly sure I have most, if not all those. Except I once read something about a place named Soda, Texas that may also be in that category. But just try googing for that.
But then it occured to me that people are going to be adding towns that are acronyms to the list, so I expanded the subject. There’s a fair number of acronym town names, although all that I’ve seen are of the names of companies that used to own the town. But the only one I could think of is a local one that I have there. I’ve seen others – usually you can spot them because they end with -co.
There are a few more in the anagram list out there. On rare occasions I run across a name that was coined by rearranging another name. Don’t remember specifics, though.
A town in Northern California was touted by its developers as the “Saratoga of California”, alluding to the healthy water there with its curative properties. However, the person pushing the development fumbled and called it “The Calistoga of Sarafornia”, much to the general amusement. The name stuck, however, and Calistoga became a thing. Or so the story goes.
Yes, I think that may have been what I saw. Kind of sketchy, detail-wise, though. No idea what the 4 names were, for example.
I wasn’t going to do portmanteaus. There’s a fair number of those out there. But that one’s just a concatenation. There’s lots of those too, especially where cities have amalgamated. Canada is especially rich in such things, since they seem to like to amalgamate towns and villages.
I added an acronym – there’s more from WV that I’ll be adding.
Not sure if or where this might fit in your municipal taxonomy . . .
In the western San Joaquin Valley oilfields in California, there was railroad that had built two coaling stations where the trains could stop to load up with coal. They were called Coaling Station A, or Coaling-A, and Coaling Station B, or Coaling-B.
Eventually, Coaling-B dried up and blew away, but a small town developed around Coaling-A. That town still exists: Coalinga, Fresno County, California, 93210.
The barren looking area at the lower left is an oil field. That facility that looks kinda like an amphitheater is actually a solar plant, the kind that has a heat collector tower and a field of parabolic mirrors to focus sunlight on the tower. The road lines going into the distance toward the upper left are looking East into the San Joaquin Valley.
That developer was none other than Samuel Brannan, legendary discoverer of gold at Sutter’s Fort. Per legend, he found the gold and then, like an idiot, ran through the streets of San Francisco shouting “Gold! Gold! I found gold in them thar hills!”, precipitating the California Gold Rush.
His Wikipedia page tells a more sensible story: He ran a general store there. After gold was found, he bought up all the picks, shovels, and other tools he could lay his hands on, and then ran through the streets shouting “Gold!”. Having a near monopoly on the implements, he was able to sell them for a very reasonable 7500% markup.
The Calistoga wiki page recounts the Sarafornia story as told by movingfinger above. Another popular legend has it that the name comes from a confabulation of “California” and “Conestoga” (as in Conestoga wagon). In any case, Calistoga is still a thing. (If it hasn’t all burnt down this month, that is.)
I always wondered just how healthy and curative that stinky sulfurous water is that all the rich people went there to wallow in (and still do to this day). The city is located at the base of a volcano, Mt. St. Helena (not to be confused with Mt. St. Helens, the Washington volcano that blew up in 1980), which is the source of the sulfurous hot springs.
Sadly, Victoria Texas has recently decided to rename a recreational lake formerly known as Saxet Lake. As far as I know, the only other named place whose name is its state spelled backwards is Aksarben Racetrack, in Omaha, Nebraska.
There’s Adaven Nevada and Adanac, Sas, Canada (nonstandard abbrev for Saskatchewan to preserve the palindrome). There was also a railroad siding in Texas named Saxet. It’s in GNIS listed as a populated place, but they call all kinds of non-towns that in that database. I remember once seeing on a map a place in California named Ainrof, which is a partial reversal. Not sure why they didn’t go all the way to Ainrofilac. It isn’t in GNIS, though.
There is a town of Canora Sask, which is a portmanteau of Canadian Northern Railway, a forerunner of Canadian National (now Via Rail). I wondered if Kenora, Ont. was a variant spelling of the same, but google reveals otherwise. Originally called Rat Portage, it amalgamated with KEwatin and NORmAn to produce Kenora. Both belong on your list, although neither is an acronym.
Actually, I already have Kenora on the list. You have the derivation slightly wrong – the RA comes from RAt Portage. And I call it an acrostic, although that’s not completely accurate either.
Acronyms are an abbreviation of a multi-word term formed by taking the first letter or letters of each word (skipping small words like ‘of’ and ‘the’ if inconvenient). Canora would fall into that category. So that’s a good addition.
Acrostics are the first letter of each word, line or sentence of some text (often a poem, but could be prose). Here’s and example of one from a certain governor of California. But there doesn’t seem to be a word for taking the first letter or letters of some arbitrary list of words or names which can be arranged in whatever order is convenient. Acrostic seems to be the closest I could find.
In downtown Los Angeles there is a short street that serves only one business: the Department of Water and Power headquarters. the street is Dewap Street (DE pt of WA ter and P ower)
How about the HELSTF at White Sands Missile Range? It’s official name is still High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility, but give it a generation or two and “Hellstaff” might become official.
Yeah, maybe. Right now it looks more like a military base than anything else.
I thought of one not in either the US or Canada: Soweto, a section of Johannesburg that became well known for riots a while back. The name is short for SOuth WEstern TOwnships. I thought there were other, similarly named areas around there, but can’t find any. Any help?
About 20 years ago or so, I wrote an article for Word Ways about place names that were reversals of other names or words. I’m wondering whether I should break this list into three wikipages – one each for acronyms, acrostics and anagrams and then add a fourth for reversals.
There is already a wikilist for names that are blends of adjacent state names (link at the bottom of my page). Some of them also qualify for acrostic status (three states’ names combined) and I’ve added them to this list. There are many more that are not on that list. Someone once had a page with a map of them, but it’s no longer around. I gave him a lot of additions.
Lapalco Boulevard is a major arterial route through the New Orleans west bank, which was formerly the right of way to the Louisiana Power and Light Company facility. Brendan Benson,. who grew up nearby, titled a rock album Lapalco.
One of the Colorado narrow gauge railroads began at a point they called Dot Zero on the map. This was later modified to Dotsero, which I guess sounded more Hispanic and romantic. The other end of the line became Orestod (Dotsero backward).
Are you only interested in names of municipalities? Because a bunch of NYC neighborhoods seem to qualify, such as Tribeca, Soho, DUMBO, Nolita and so forth. Some are just the inventions of real estate agents and developers while others are more well-established.
