Names on the Land

This book outlines where every major American place name came from, told as a narrative rather than a dictionary. Stewart runs the whole sweep — Native words remade by the English, Spanish saints, French traders, Dutch New York, the Puritans naming towns for the Bible and for home, surveyors handing out numbers, boosters inventing classical names for prairie crossroads, railroads naming stations down the line alphabetically. He’s funny about the accidents: The misprints, the misheard words, the names given as jokes that stuck. It was published in 1945 and never really superseded.