“Almost Every Place, Every Rock, Had A Name”: A Consideration of Place-Name Density on King Island, Alaska

Abstract

King Island, Alaska, has a relatively high place-name density of 45 place names per square mile. King Island Inupiat elders and community members, with the help of Western scientists (including a linguist, an anthropologist, an archaeologist and biologists), documented 163 place names over the 3.5 square mile area of King Island (Ugiuvak), Alaska. This is 1.5 times to 3500 times denser than what is reported for other communities in the literature. This article poses factors that might contribute to high place-name density, including: (a) length of time the island had been inhabited; (b) the fact that it is an island, bounded by water, thus limiting mobility; (c) the relatively high (for the arctic) population density; (d) the intense use of the island for subsistence purposes; and (e) for navigation purposes. In 2003, the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the project entitled Documenting the Cultural Geography, Biogeography, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge of King Island, Alaska (Grant #OPP-0328235). The idea for the project was suggested by King Island elder Marie Saclamana in 1997, when she told me that “almost every place, every rock, had a name.” She wanted to bring King Island elders back to King Island to map these place names. The NSF-funded project did just that: in the summers of 2005 and 2006, approximately 15–20 elders and another 25–30 other community members went to King Island and mapped place names as well as subsistence and archaeological sites. The elders were assisted by a multidisciplinary team of scientists, including anthropologists, archaeologists, biologists, a linguist and a videographer. Overall, we mapped 163 places on King Island.