The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 49, July 1945 - April, 1946 Page: 436
717 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 24 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
The October, 1945, Geographical Review carries an article
by Meredith F. Burrill on the reorganization of the United
States Board of Geographical Names. Among the new mem-
bers of the advisory committee to the board is Mr. W. E.
Wrather, head of the United States Geological Survey and dis-
tinguished past president of the Texas State Historical Asso-
ciation. The article points out the importance of place names,
especially in war, in the following paragraph:
Geographical names, commonly taken for granted as a part of our
everyday equipment for living, assume a new meaning in time of war.
In this global war, unfamiliar names of places all over the world have
suddenly become household words: more, they are "fighting" words, tools
of war. Vast programs of mapping, military and naval intelligence work,
economic and political investigations and reports use geographical names
by the hundreds of thousands. The task of making these tools ready for
use is immense and complex. The principal official agency engaged in
the task in this country is the United States Board on Geographical
Names.
The same issue of the Review contains a review of George
R. Stewart's Names on the Land: A Historical Account of
Place-Naming in the United States. The review opens with a
quotation from the book.
The land has been named, and the names are rooted deep.... Let the
conqueror come or the revolution rage; many of our names have survived
both already and may again. Though the books should be burned and the
people themselves cut off, still from the names-as from arrowheads and
potsherds-the patient scholar may again piece together some record of
what we were.
The derivation of place names is not only of importance to
the scholar; it is an extremely fascinating field of study. Cen-
tennial Creek, in Mason County, takes on new meaning when
one learns from Miss Margaret Bierschwale's account of Mason
County place names for the Handbook of Texas that it was
"named following James E. Rank's return from the centennial
in Philadelphia in 1876. A picnic at the spring may have been
the occasion of the naming." Miss Bierschwale's account illus-
trates also the necessity for collecting data on place names now.
Spice Rock, which was formerly known as Spies Rock, was
named because the Indians used it as a vantage point from
which to spy. Obviously, the real origin of the place name could
easily have been lost through the change in orthography. By
setting down the information in the Handbook a permanent436
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 49, July 1945 - April, 1946, periodical, 1946; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth146056/m1/493/: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.