Chicago
“EVEN THE NAME “CHICAGO” seemed cool to me as a child—it was itself, it was idiosyncratic, hatched in its own place, not a colonial name like New York or New Orleans, or a paean to a particular religion’s heroes like San Francisco or San Antonio, but a name grown from the land and water of that place; although it was while I lived there that I discovered from Mr Mahoney that the word Chicago was an abbreviation of the Potawatomi name for the place where the river entered the lake, roughly chicag...ouate, referring to a species of garlic that grew particularly well there.
“So it is,” said Mr Mahoney in his wry tone, “that every day many thousands of people around the world use a word meaning ‘garlic’ for the city in which we live; we might as well call ourselves Garlic City, or Garlicville, or Garlicton, or Garlicsburg, any of which would be not only historically accurate but redolent, in a manner of speaking. A visionary man such as yourself might see to it that a proposition for a name change make it onto the Cook County ballot.MoreLess
“So it is,” said Mr Mahoney in his wry tone, “that every day many thousands of people around the world use a word meaning ‘garlic’ for the city in which we live; we might as well call ourselves Garlic City, or Garlicville, or Garlicton, or Garlicsburg, any of which would be not only historically accurate but redolent, in a manner of speaking. A visionary man such as yourself might see to it that a proposition for a name change make it onto the Cook County ballot.MoreLess
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