On a recent trip Up North, I passed through or close to a number of towns that sort of rhymed with Milwaukee. And it got me thinking: what do these words mean in their Native American languages? Wausaukee, Pewaukee, Packwaukee … they all sound really similar to the untrained ear of this white guy.

Of course, I remember Alice Cooper in "Wayne's World" explaining that Milwaukee is Algonquian for "the good land." But that couldn't be true, could it?

My first guess was that "waukee" must have something to do with lakes. Yeah, I know: duh.

Fortunately, this little thing called the Internet had some answers.

According to the Visit Milwaukee Web site:

"Long before the first settlers came to this area, the Algonkian Indians had a special name for the land: Millioki, which means "gathering place by the waters." The Indians may have picked the name because they used the area for tribal gatherings or because they observed how three rivers (the Menomonee, the Kinnickinnic and the Milwaukee) met before flowing into the waters of Lake Mie-sit-gan (Michigan)."

Well, that makes sense. But leave it to "The Straight Dope" and Cecil Adams to set things straight. Apparently, Mimi M., of Chicago was wondering the same thing:

"Dear Cecil:

Can you tell me the derivation and meaning of the syllable wau, as found in midwestern place names such as Milwaukee, Waukegan, Waupaca, etc.? --Mimi M., Chicago

Dear Mimi:

Not really. The Algonquin Indian languages that gave names to these and many other places in the midwest were oral, like all North American Indian languages. Place names like Milwaukee and Waukegan weren't written down by Indians but by white dudes who had no familiarity with the subtleties of the Indian tongue (some of them had a pretty shaky grip on their own languages, for that matter). The spellings have changed God knows how many times--Milwaukee, for example, first appears as "Melleoiki," which may or may not have meant "good land" in Chippewa.

Thus we have the wau syllable popping up in a slew of names that seem to have nothing in common: Waubonsee, from the name of a Potawatomi chief who attacked his enemies at dawn (wapin, "daybreak"); Waukegan, from waukeegance, a translation into Indian of the original name, "Little Fort" (the -ce, which meant "little," was dropped out of civic pride); Waupaca, where wau seems to come from waub, the Potawatomi word for "white" (the same goes for Waupecan Creek, "white sand bottom"); Waukesha, "little fox"; Wausau, from wassa, "far away place"; and so on ad infinitum (Latin, "and so it goes")."

And there you have it. If any readers have more info, please post it as a Talkback at the bottom of this blog.

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