That is funny. My brother went to Northwestern, and it was a drive northwest of where I was living at the time, so it seemed like a reasonable name to me. I never thought of it being not particularly northwest. I just assumed it was “west” at the time of its founding, and relatively north, being somewhat close to the northern border-- or at any rate, closer than it is to the southern one. You can predict the weather from the “north” in the name.
People from the various states are called things like “New Yorkers,” or “Californians.”
People from Indiana are called “Hoosiers.” No one has any idea what the origin of the word is, nor what it ever meant, apart from “someone from Indiana.”
You can start a pretty heated argument by taking a side in the debate over whether a Hoosier is someone born in the state, or someone who resides there. I seriously almost got punched for saying I was a New Yorker by birth, but had been a Hoosier for many years. If I’d been a man, I probably would have gotten punched. The other guy was a couple of beers gone, and a bit of an anti-Semite, but the Hoosier thing was the trigger.
I’m a geographer who lived in Chicago for my undergraduate degree, and I’m interested in aviation….yet I never knew this until now. Thanks!
I remember a display in Chicago Midway about the battle.
That was also the factoid that infamously tripped up supercomputer Watson during Final Jeopardy.
The Colony, Texas was named because it was the headquarters of Peters Colony, an empresario land grant given by the Republic of Texas originally given to a group of investers headed by a guy named Peters. The Colony is up in Denton County and was founded in 1973.
In St. Louis, a hoosier is a redneck, referring especially to white trash from Jefferson County. I grew up knowing Hoosier as someone from Indiana and was very confused when I moved here as to why so many Indiana residents apparently lived in Arnold.
Snowflake, Arizona is named after Mr. Erastus Snow and Mr. William Flake.
The body of water known as Ashley Pond in Los Alamos, New Mexico is named after Mr. Ashley Pond, Jr. Calling it Ashley Pond Pond would be confusing so they just call it Ashley Pond.
For similar reasons, the Outerbridge Crossing (mentioned upthread) is not called the “Outerbridge Bridge.”
Yup.
I grew up in SoCal. Hoosier was an insult on par with yokel, hillbilly, or bumpkin. And generally connoted somebody from “flyover country”, not specifically Indiana.
I was surprised upon growing up and living elsewhere that Indianans would unironically use that derisive term for themselves.
That’s crazy!
Interesting. Thank you.
At one time ~15 years ago it looked like I’d be job-transferred to DFW. Among many towns in the greater Dallas Fort Worth area we looked at houses in The Colony which was then still building out here and there.
I totally assumed that was some real estate mogul’s idea of a name connoting isolation and separateness. As if it was a giant gated community. Which it is not.
I’d say calling it Flakesnow AZ would have been even crazier. 
They also have White Settlement which was named because at the time a lot of Native Americans lived in the area and that’s where all the whites settled.
There is a White Township in New Jersey which despite being 95% white is named after a guy named Alexander White.
You might assume that Brick Township NJ was named that because of some old brick industry in town. It was actually named after a prominent resident, Joseph Brick.
Mount Joy, Pennsylvania was named for an 18th-century ship (the Mountjoy) and is nowhere near any kind of mountain.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the word as a term for people from Indiana came first.
A possible etymology I once heard was that Indianans would answer the door by asking “Who’s here?”
You’re almost certainly right.
Hoosiers unironically and perhaps proudly called themselves just that, and as some of them emigrated in quantity from Indiana to places farther afield, the locals there decided to look down their nose at the newcomer former Indianans. So the term gathered its pejorative meanings then and there.
I just experienced that transition in the opposite order as I grew up and then moved from elsewhere towards Indiana.
Kind of like “Aggies” from Texas A&M. They were always used as the butt of jokes when I was a kid growing up in Texas.
Q: “How do you get a one-armed Aggie out of a tree?”
A: “Wave to him.” 