Onomastic Amelioration in California Place Names

Abstract

LE CHANGESthat have evolved in the place names of the State of California as a whole would occupy a volume. My intent is merely to give, in a particular region and a particular era, a sampling of the kind of onomastic phenomenon that has probably occurred throughout the whole country during the last century. The attempt to themselves is a widely recognized attribute of Americans, and this characteristic, while perhaps best known in its economic aspect, persists in many phases of American life. Coue's famous dictum of Every day in I'm getting and better is of course the classic expression of an American quality that, when examined in the area of onomastics, documents and sustains the assertion that in every way place names get and better, at least in the subjective view of the eyes of those immediately concerned. The geographic limits to which this paper has been restricted make it necessary to draw the illustrative examples mostly from the region around the American River, east of Sacramento, primarily El Dorado and Placer counties, or what is termed the Mother Lode country, extending from the middle fork of the American River south to a point near Mariposa on a strip roughly two miles wide. The original motivation in attributing names to places frequently was an attempt to convey some sense of 1) the geographical features peculiar to an area, as in Bald Hill, White Rock, Stoney Bar, 2) to describe the dominant activity performed in the earliest days, as in Logtown, or 3) to perpetuate the memory of a person, as in Georgetown1 or a place, as in African Bar.