{Town} Memorial Hospital

Factual Questions
1

In my area, hospitals have one of four kinds of names:

{Name of Saint} Hospital (if Catholic)
{Med School or University} Hospital
{Name of town, region, or neighborhood} Hospital

or

{Name of town, region, or neighborhood} Memorial Hospital.

Question – who or what is being memorialized in the last?

2

Sometimes it’s acknowledgement of single or multiple endowments used to build or support the hospital: its initial funding came from bequests in the wills of wealthy deceased people, and the “Memorial” acknowledges this.

Another possibility is that “Podunk Memorial Hospital” is the short form of the name, which is actually “The I. Phil Anthropist Memorial Hospital of Podunk, New Colozona”. This is the case in Jefferson and St. Lawrence County, New York, where several small hospitals in moderate-sized villages (which would be small cities in less populated states) were endowed by Life Savers magnate Edward John Noble, and will be indifferently referred to as 'the E.J. Noble Hospital in Gouverneur/Alexandria Bay/wherever" or “the Gouverneur [etc.] hospital.” Although in this case “Memorial” happened not to have been used, in general in such instances it is, and the same sort of shorthanding of the name to townname + memorial + hospital occurs.

3

Makes sense. Thanks, Poly.

4

Another possibility is that it’s named to generically memorialize the dead of some war – usually WWII, but perhaps even WWI. It was not unheard of to name big municipal projects in tribute to the recently fallen soldiers of the town or city.

5

Another name category:

[name of Protestant sect] Hospital

6

My hopspital is Hoag Memorial Hopsital, Presbyterian. Named after George Hoag, an old friend of my grandpa’s who had a bunch of money and built a hospital. A group of Presbyterian churches had raised enough money to buy the site, but couldn’t build anything until George and the family foundation stepped in.

Thanks, George- your little hospital (not so little now) brought me into this world, kept me healthy, and saved my life at least once. I even had my kids there.