Minicast Bonus: Picketwire

MARTHA: You’re listening to an A Way with Words minicast! 

And today, we’re diving into a fascinating question from Gary Heath. He’s an emeritus professor at Mount St. Clare College in Clinton, Iowa. Gary writes, “A French teacher at Dartmouth College told me about Purgatoire, Kansas, becoming Picketwire, Kansas, due to Yankee immigrants replacing French settlers. I can find no documentation or reference to this. Can you help?”

GRANT: Well, that’s on the right track, but not quite right. The shift from Purgatoire to Picketwire is for a river and its canyonland in southeastern Colorado, not Kansas. It’s a great example of folk etymology shaping how we speak.

MARTHA: How does Purgatoire become Picketwire phonetically? The first word is French for “purgatory,” but “Picketwire”?

GRANT: Well, the name was Spanish first: Río de las Animas Perdidas en Purgatorio — River of the Lost Souls in Purgatory. Then the French shortened it to Purgatoire. English speakers heard something like “purg-uh-twar,” then mapped it to the familiar words “picket” and “wire.” In folk etymology like this, a change is made to fit to current knowledge.

MARTHA: So we reshape a word or name into forms that seem to make. Maybe they were thinking of fences and horse pickets?

GRANT: Right. Pickets being those stakes you drive in the ground to tether horses to. The folk transformation happens through hearing and reading something unfamiliar. People fit unfamiliar words to the rules of their own language, or they recast unfamiliar sounds into familiar words.

MARTHA: Do people still use the name “Picketwire” for the river?

GRANT: Well, “Purgatoire” is the official name on maps. But “Picketwire” is a living local name that folks still use. And the Spanish name of the river also gave Las Animas county and a couple of nearby towns their names.

MARTHA: There are lots of other words and place names that have had this happen.

GRANT: Yep, that’s right. In fact, there’s a linguistic term, “Hobson-Jobson,” itself a folk etymology, which refers to the shaping of foreign words into more familiar forms. It’s named after an Anglophone version of an Arabic mourning cry for Hasan and Husayn, the grandsons of the prophet Mohammed. “Hobson-Jobson” what English-speakers thought they heard.

MARTHA: Yeah, and there are others too that are the result of folk etymology.

GRANT: Just sticking to French, there’s Smackover, Arkansas, which may come from the French chemin couvert, meaning “covered path.” There’s Lowfreight, Arkansas, which has been linked to French l’eau frette or l’eau froide meaning “freezing or cold water.” And Lemon Fair River in Vermont is said to come from le mont vert, meaning “green hill.”

MARTHA: Is there something about French that makes this more common? Or it is something about English-speakers?

GRANT: I don’t think so! It can happen any time people encounter a place name from another language. Key West, for example, is an Anglophone transformation of the Spanish Cayo Hueso, meaning “bone key.” 

MARTHA: At least one word was correct!

GRANT: In any case, Gary, if you ever find yourself near La Junta /la HUN-tuh/, Colorado, — that’s the Anglophone version of the Spanish /la HOON-tah/ — take a drive through the Picketwire Canyonlands. You’ll find dinosaur tracks, and cowboy history, and a name that tells a story.

MARTHA: And if you’ve got a favorite place name with a curious origin, we’d love to hear it. Drop us a line at words@waywordradio.org.

GRANT: Or call or text 877-929-9673, toll-free in the United States and Canada.

MARTHA: For A Way with Words, I’m Martha Barnette.

GRANT: And I’m Grant Barrett. Bye! 

MARTHA: Bye!