phat

An example of white adoption of a Black slang term. The Phat Cart food vendor in Portland, Oregon. Three white people standing outside a food kiosk, with a fourth white person behind the counter writing down orders.

31 January 2022

The Black slang phat means something that is excellent, desirable, rich in quality. It is common in hip-hop parlance where it is often used to refer to music or to sexually desirable women. It is semantically similar to another Black slang term, large. As for its origin, phat is simply a respelling of fat.

The adjective fat has had a sense of rich or abundant for a thousand years. The Old English fætt carried this sense, as can be seen in the version of Psalm 147:3 found in the Arundel Psalter from c.1099 C.E. It’s a Latin Psalter with an Old English interlinear gloss:

forþon he gestrangode hegas gata þinra gebletsode bearn þine on þe. se asette endas heora sibbe & of fætte hwætes gefilþ þe

(Because he strengthened the bars of the gate, blessed your children in you. He established peace on your borders and filled you with the fat of the wheat)

The Latin is adipe frumenti.

This sense is maintained moving into the Middle English period. John Wyclif uses it, c.1380, in a petition which, among other things, criticizes monasteries and convents for taking control of local, parish churches in order to obtain their benefices or endowments:

Also comunly siche chirchis ben approprid by symonie, as þei witen betere hemself, payinge a gret summe of moneye for sich apropriacioun, ȝif þe benefice be faat.

(Also, commonly such churches are appropriated by simony, as they think better of themself, paying a great sum of money for such an appropriation, if the benefice is fat.)

And this sense of fat is perhaps best known in the phrase fat of the land, which comes from Genesis 45:18, first translated this way in the Geneva Bible of 1561:

And take your father, and your housholdes, and come unto me, and I will giue you the good of the land of Egypt, and ye shal eat the fat of the land.

But these senses of fat meaning rich or abundant are generally not applied to people, as phat can be.

The phat spelling was first recorded in 1963, making an appearance in an article about Black slang in the 2 August issue of Time magazine:

mellow, phat, stone, boss. General adjectives of approval: a stone fox is a very pretty girl; a boss short is a big car.

The sense of phat meaning sexually desirable was in place by the mid 1970s. Herbert Foster’s 1974 Ribbin’, Jivin’, and Playin’ the Dozens records the following incident:

School has just ended. George is sitting on the steps in the school running a strong rap with a number of girls. A female teacher comes down the steps and hears him say, “How about a kiss, baby?”

[...]

Actually, if the female teacher were a “scab” or a “fish” the student probably would have ignored her. This teacher, however, was a “phat tip.” By making a big play in front of the girls, he was paying her a compliment.

Foster’s notes to this passage read:

The earlier definition of “rapping” or “running a strong rap” had sexual connotations. [...] In jive lexicon or street language a “fish” or a “scab” is an ugly girl. Also, a female who is “phat” is a beautiful girl or woman. My informants tell me that the letters in “phat” stand for “pussy,” “hips,” “ass,” and “tits,” or a “pretty hole at times.” I am sure there are some others. “Tip” is a Buffalo word meaning a girl or woman.

The acronymic origin related here is incorrect, but it is noteworthy that the idea that phat is an acronym has been around as long as the sexually desirable sense has appeared in print.

But it was with the word’s use in 1990s hip-hop culture to refer to music that phat really took off in popularity. Here is an example from the Michigan Chronicle of 4 August 1993 about an unlikely rap artist, child television star Raven-Symoné:

Raven was asked to give three reasons why people should buy her album. She paused for a moment, then explained, “It’s phat. Second there are ten songs, three written by my daddy that I helped write. And, the third reason is every song is for every person. The kids and grownups can listen. So that’s it.” (For those who don’t know, “phat” in hip hop/rap terminology means a strong, slammin’ sound or beat.)

And this about a more typical rap artist from the Afro-American Gazette of 13–19 March 1995:

On his riveting 12 track debut album, This Is How We Do It, on Def Jam, Montell Jordan has successfully bridged the gap between traditional R&B harmonies and phat beats that equal slammin’ tracks.

But phat is not just used to refer to music and attractive women. As the 1963 quotation indicates, it is also a general adjective of approval. From the Black Collegian of October 1996:

I have made it through my first semester I am attending a historically Black college after having gone to predominately White schools all of my life. I have never felt so good. College is phat! I have met some of the most interesting and smart Black students I have ever encountered.

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Sources:

“African American Up and Coming Rising Star.” Afro-American Gazette (Grand Rapids, Michigan), 13–19 March 1995, 9. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Americana: Beyond the Ears of the Greys.” Time, 2 August 1963, 14.

The Bible and Holy Scriptures. Geneva: 1561, Genesis 45:18, 24. Early English Texts Online (EEBO).

Dictionary of Old English: A to I, 2018, s.v. fætt, n.

Foster, Herbert L. Ribbin’, Jivin’, and Playin’ the Dozens. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger, 1974, 51–52.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. phat, adj.

Holsey, Steve. “Raven-Symone: The Hardest Working Little Girl in Show Business.” Michigan Chronicle (Detroit), 4 August 1993, 1-B. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. fat, adj.

Oess, Guido, ed. Der Altenglische Arundel-Psalter. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1910, Psalm 147:3, 229. HathiTrust Digital Archive. London, British Library, Arundel MS 83.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2001, modified June 2021, s.v. phat, adj.; March 2015, modified December 2021, s.v. large, adj., adv., and n. (and int.); second edition, 1989, s.v. fat, adj. and n.2.

Parker, Linda Bates. Black Collegian (New Orleans), October 1996, 21. ProQuest Magazines.

Wyclif, John. “A Petition to the King and Parliament” (c.1380). Select English Works of John Wyclif, vol. 3 of 3. Thomas Arnold, ed. London: Macmillan, 1871, 519. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Photo credit: Anonymous photographer, 2014. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

normality / normalcy / normalness

28 January 2022

Google Ngram graph of the frequency of normality, normalcy, and normalness in American writing from 1900–2019. Normality is the most common of the three. Normalcy surges in frequency in 1916 from almost no use to an initial peak in 1924. After that, it waxes in wanes in frequency but remains in fairly frequent use. Normalness is extremely rare throughout this period.

Normality, normalcy, and normalness all carry the same meaning, that of conformance to a standard or to the usual state of things. But while they mean the same thing, the three words differ in register, dialect, and frequency of use. Of the three, normality is the most common on both sides of the Atlantic, but normalcy is more likely to be found in North America than in Britain and is viewed by some as an error or, at least, as an informal usage. Normalcy is also historically associated with the 1920 presidential candidacy of Warren Harding. Normalness is quite rare on both sides of the Atlantic.

Google Ngram graph of the frequency of normality, normalcy, and normalness in British writing from 1900–2019. Normality is the most common of the three, rising in frequency throughout the period. Normalcy is vanishingly rare before 1916, after which it slowly and steadily grows in frequency, but remaining significantly less common than in American usage (see graph below). Normalness is extremely rare throughout this period.

Etymologically, the three words are similar. They share the same root, normal, but use different endings that change nouns and adjectives into abstract nouns, -ity, -cy, and -ness. And all three first appear in the mid nineteenth century.

Of the three, normality is the oldest and the most common. It is most likely modeled on the French normalité, which dates to 1834 in that language. The English word appears shortly after the French one, in an article about German literature in the May 1837 Eclectic Review:

The German possesses little social flexibility, yet so much stronger is his individuality, and to that he will give free expression, even to willfulness and caricature. Genius bursts through every barrier that would oppose it; and even amongst the vulgar, the mother-wit breaks out. When one contemplates the literature of other nations, one observes more or less of normality—a sort of French art of gardening; it is the German alone which is forest-like—a field overrun with wild growth. Each intellect is a flower, distinct in form, colour, perfume.

Normalcy appears a couple of decades later, but its early use is restricted to mathematical jargon. From Charles Davies’s and William Peck’s 1855 Mathematical Dictionary:

SUB-NOR´MAL. [L. sub, and norma, a rule]. That part of the axis on which the normal is taken, contained between the foot of the ordinate through the point of normalcy of the curve, and the point in which the normal intersects the axis.

A review of Joseph Worcester’s 1860 dictionary in the May 1860 issue of the New Englander notes that normalcy could be found in technical texts but had yet to appear in any general dictionary. (Worcester was the chief competitor to Noah Webster in the nineteenth century American dictionary market.)

The 1864 edition of Webster’s dictionary (published posthumously) corrected this omission, but the definition does not make clear if it is used generally or only in the mathematical sense:

Nôr´mal, a. (Lat. normalis, from norma, rule, pattern; Fr. & Sp. normal, It. normale.)
1. According to an established norm, rule, or principle; conformed to a type or regular form; accomplishing the end or destiny; performing the proper functions; not abnormal; regular; analogical.
[...]
2. (Geom.) According to a square or rule; perpendicular; forming a right angle.
[...]

Nôr´mal, n. (Fr. ligne normale. See supra.)
1. A perpendicular.
2. (Geom.) A straight line perpendicular to the tangent of a curve at any point, and included between the curve and the access of the abscissus.
[...]

Nôr´mal-cy, n. The state or fact of being normal; as, the point of normalcy. [Rare.]

But the general (i.e., non-mathematical) sense is definitely in use a decade later. From the Chicago Sunday Times of 14 February 1875 in an article about aristocrats at Parisian dances:

Stiffness and pretense soon wear off at the balls. Blood, not a bit blue, asserts itself, and animal spirits seek their wonted channel. If their claim to high breeding be accepted, they will at once forego further self-assertion. A little wine warms them into candor and normalcy, and then grand airs fly off like a covey of partridges, not to return, at least the same evening.

But as the Google Ngram graph shows, normalcy remained rare until around 1916 when it surged in popularity in American writing. (The Google Ngram tool is not the best measure, but it makes a quick “back of the envelope” estimate that is usually reasonably accurate. Plus, the tool makes it easy to create comparative visualizations, which is why I use it here.) In 1920, Republican U.S. presidential candidate Warren Harding made Return to Normalcy his campaign slogan. The slogan was widely critiqued as “bad” English, but it capitalized on the weariness created by the First World War, the influenza pandemic, and the anti-Communist Red Scare, and Harding won in a landslide. Harding was using normalcy in his speeches as early as 14 June 1920, as this transcript in the Kansas City Star shows:

Normal thinking will help more. The world does deeply need to get normal, and liberal doses of mental science freely mixed with resolution will help mightily. I do not mean the old order will be restored. It will never be again. But there is a sane normalcy due under the new conditions, to be reached in deliberation and understanding. And all men must understand and join in reaching it. Certain fundamentals are unchangeable and everlasting.

But as we have seen, Harding did not coin this sense of normalcy, nor did his use significantly alter the popular trajectory of the phrase, as can be seen in the Google Ngram graph. Rather, Harding’s use of the phrase started after the surge in popularity was well underway and well before it had reached its initial peak, which was around 1924. So, he didn’t make a significant contribution to the popularity of the word. What Harding’s use of normalcy did, however, was bring the word to the attention of grammarians and linguists.

That leaves us with normalness, which is the red-headed stepchild of the three. It has always remained rare in both British and American English. But it appeared at about the same time as the other two words. Its first appearance is in an 1854 translation of Ludwig Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity. Of note is the translator, Mary Ann Evans, better known by the pseudonym she used in penning literary works, George Eliot:

Let the fanatic make disciples as the sand on the sea-shore; the sand is still sand; mine be the pearl—a júdicious friend. The agreement of others is therefore my criterion of the normalness, the universality, the truth of my thoughts. I cannot so abstract myself from myself as to judge myself with perfect freedom and disinterestedness; but another has an impartial judgment; through him I correct, complete, extend my own judgment, my own taste, my own knowledge.

Feuerbach’s German was Normalität.

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Sources:

“Article VI.—Worcester’s Dictionary.” New Englander (New Haven, Connecticut), May 1860, 417. ProQuest.

“Art. VII. Menzel on German Literature.” The Eclectic Review (London), May 1837, 504. ProQuest Historical Periodicals.

“Dancing Paris” (24 January 1875). Sunday Times (Chicago), 14 February 1875, 12. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Davies, Charles and William G. Peck. Mathematical Dictionary and Cyclopedia of Mathematical Science. New York: A.S. Barnes, 1855, 542. Nineteenth Century Collections Online.

Dr. Webster’s Complete Dictionary of the English Language. Chauncey Goodrich and Noel Porter, eds. London: Bell and Daldy, et al., 1864, 893, s.v. normalcy, n. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Feuerbach, Ludwig. The Essence of Christianity. Mary Ann Evans, trans. London: John Chapman, 1854, 157. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 1994, 664–65, s.v. normalcy.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2003, modified March 2021, s.v. normality, n.; modified June 2019, s.v. normalcy, n.; modified March 2018, s.v. normalness, n.

“Where Harding Has Stood.” Kansas City Star (Missouri), 14 June 1920, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Image credit: Google Books Ngram Viewer, accessed 11 December 2021.

Indiana

Detail of an 1804 map showing the then-territory of Indiana

27 January 2022

The state of Indiana is named, generically, for the Indigenous people of North America, but obviously the name does not acknowledge the specific Indigenous peoples who have lived and are still living on that land. The land was the home to the Mississipian peoples (1000–1500 C.E.), and at the time of European contact the Shawnee, Miami, and Illini peoples, among others, were living there. Other peoples who have lived in what is now the state of Indiana since European contact have included the Kickapoo, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Wea, Piankashaw, Chippewa, Delaware, Wyandot, Kaskaskia, and Eel River tribes.

Indiana first appears in English as a woman’s name. For instance, it appears as the name of a character in Richard Steele’s 1722 play The Conscious Lovers. This use of a person’s name, however, is more likely a reference to colonial India than to the people of North America.

When the name was first applied as a name of a territory, it was not to what now constitutes the state of Indiana, but to a region of some 5,000 square miles in what is now West Virginia. The territory was ceded by the Iroquois Confederacy to a Philadelphia trading company in 1768 as compensation for goods seized from them in a 1763 raid. In 1776, the state of Virginia laid claim to this territory, and in a long-running legal battle that concluded in 1798, Virginia secured the territory for itself and discarded the name Indiana.

The name was revived in 1800 when the Northwest Territory of the United States was divided and the name given to the western portion, the eastern portion being Ohio. From the 1800 Act to Divide the Territory of the United States North-West of the Ohio, into Two Separate Governments:

That from and after the fourth day of July next, all that part of the territory of the United States north west of the Ohio river, which lies to the westward of a line beginning at the Ohio, opposite to the mouth of Kentucky river, and running thence to Fort Recovery, and thence north until it shall intersect the territorial line between the United States and Canada, shall, for the purposes of temporary government, constitute a separate territory, and be called the INDIANA Territory.

Subsequently, the Indiana Territory was reduced in size when the Michigan and Illinois Territories were separated from it. Indiana became the nineteenth state in 1816. Residents of the state are popularly known as Hoosiers, a mysterious name with no known etymological connection to the name Indiana.

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Sources:

American Indian Center of Indiana. Accessed 10 December 2021. http://www.americanindiancenter.org/info.php?pnum=10

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.

Hodgin, Cyrus W. The Naming of Indiana. Papers of the Wayne County, Indiana Historical Society, 1.1. Richmond, Indiana: Nicolson Printing, 1903, 6–10. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2009, modified March 2019, s.v. Indiana, n.

United States Senate. Amendment to An Act to Divide the Territory of the United States North-West of the Ohio, into Two Separate Governments (H.R. 73, 6th Congress). 21 April 1800.

Victor, Benjamin. An Epistle to Sir Richard Steele, on his Play, Call’d, the Conscious Lovers. London: W. Chetwood, et al. 1722. 15. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Image credit: Abraham Bradley, Jr., 1804. Library of Congress.

peanut / peanut gallery

The peanut gallery from the Howdy Doody television show (1947–60). A black and white photo of approximately 40 children seated in a grandstand labeled with a sign reading “Peanut Gallery.” A man in a stylized cowboy costume, Buffalo Bob Smith, squats in front of them.

26 January 2022

A peanut is the seed of the legume Arachis hypogaea. The name is a compound of pea + nut, presumably because it resembles the seed pod of the pea, but the seed itself is harder, like a nut. (Botanically, it’s not technically a nut.) The plant is native to South America but is commercially grown in warmer climes throughout the globe. In addition to being the name of the legume, peanut has developed a slang sense for things and people who are physically small or socially insignificant, such as children.

The name peanut dates to the early nineteenth century, although there is at least one late eighteenth century use of the word to refer to the hickory nut. The hickory nut usage is from Henry Wansey’s 1796 Journal of an Excursion to the United States:

I brought from the United States with me, of live animals, two kinds of tortoises, and a beautiful flying squirrel; of shrubs and plants, rhododendrons, martegon lillies, tulip trees, acacias, Virginia cypresses, magnolia glaucus, sugar maple trees, &c. Of nuts, hiccory and chinquopin, or pea nuts. The latter, I find, is very common in China, as a native Chinese told me, when dining at my house, with two gentlemen of Lord Macartney’s suite, some of those nuts being on table.

The earliest known use of peanut to refer to the legume is by Washington Irving in one of the letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, first published in the New York Morning Chronicle of 1 December 1802:

The curtain rose—out walked the Queen with great majesty; she answered my ideas—she was dressed well, she looked well, and she acted well. The Queen was followed by a pretty gentleman, who, from his winking and grinning, I took to be the court fool; I soon found out my mistake. He was a courtier “high in trust,” and either general, colonel, or something of martial dignity. They talked for some time, though I could not understand the drift of their discourse, so I amused myself with eating pea-nuts.

Within a few decades, however, peanut had acquired an adjectival use meaning small, insignificant, or foolish. From William Dunlap’s 1836 Thirty Years Ago; or the Memoirs of a Water Drinker, in which the character Spiff describes an encounter with some hecklers in a theater where his wife is performing as Lady Macbeth:

“Two blackguards came into the Shakespeare box and disturbed the audience while Mrs. Spiffard was in one of her best scenes; and the scoundrels made use of insolent language respecting her—her person—her acting—and I think I can appeal to any one in favour of her Lady Macbeth at all times.”

[...]

“But you, Spiff, when they insulted Mrs. Spiffard?—What said you” asked the manager.

“‘This  may be sport,” said I, ‘to you, but it is a serious injury—a wanton outrage upon the feelings of the audience and the actor or actress.’”

[...]

“Well. What said they.”

“They look’d at each other, and then at me, as much to say, ‘who are you?’—I answered that look——”

“With a look?”

“‘I am that lady’s husband.’ They look’d at each other again—appeared to feel like fools by quitting their places, for they were standing on the seats of the box, and soon after they shuffled off, as well as they could.”

“And left you ‘cock of the walk,’ as Millstone says.”

“We ought all to thank you,” said Cooper, “they were your pea-nut fellows, I suppose.”

Within a few decades this adjective meaning insignificant had morphed into a noun. From an 1864 account by Mark Twain:

I observe that that young officer of the Pacific squadron—the one with his nostrils turned up like port-holes—has become a great favorite with half the mothers in the house, by imparting to them much useful information concerning the manner of doctoring children among the South American savages. His brother is a brigadier in the Navy. The drab-complexioned youth with the Solferino mustache has corralled the other half with the Japanese treatment.—The more I think of it, the more I admire it. Now, I am no peanut. I have an idea that I could invent some little remedies that would stir up a commotion among these women, if I chose to try. I always had a good general notion of physic, I believe. It is one of my natural gifts, too, for I have never studied a single day under a regular physician. I will jot down a few items here, just to see how likely I am to succeed.

This nominal use to mean a small or insignificant person would evolve into a sense of peanut meaning a child, a sense that would often be used affectionately. This last is, perhaps, most famously exemplified by Charles Schulz’s long-running comic strip Peanuts.

And around the same time that Twain was writing the above piece, the term peanut gallery came into use, referring to the cheap seats in a theater, usually the highest balcony. Because the seats were inexpensive, they were often occupied by a rowdy and boisterous crowd. In the American South, however, peanut gallery referred to the segregated seats occupied by Blacks. Here is an 1867 example from the New Orleans Times Picayune in a review of a performance by blackface minstrels:

It is useless for us to repeat our praises of Johnny Thompson, Billy Reeves, and others of the company, as negro delineators; they “out Herod Herod,” and put the darkies in the “peanut gallery” fairly to the blush.

An early, non-racialized use of peanut gallery can be found the Placerville, California Mountain Democrat of 10 June 1876. Republican senator and presidential candidate James G. Blaine had been accused of selling worthless land to the Union Pacific Railroad, a laundering of bribe money. This passage details Blaine’s attempt to divert attention away from the scandal. Blaine would lose the nomination fight to Rutherford B. Hayes:

The emergency demanded a bold and prompt diversion. So this modern Scipio for the second time this session “carried the war into Africa,” sprang into the House with his bundle of letters, read them in an excited manner to an excited audience, giving plausible explanations as he went along, winding up with a savage assault upon J. Proctor Knott, Democratic Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. There was a great deal of Beecherism in all this. It was bold, brilliant, adroit, audacious. As a bid for applause from the political pit and peanut gallery it was a masterpiece.

Some sources contend that peanut gallery comes from the practice of people in the cheap seats eating peanuts, but it is more likely that it is simply an outgrowth of the small, insignificant sense. Those in the cheap seats, whether they be Black people; children; or boisterous, white adults didn’t matter.

And for an extensive review of the names for the peanut in different languages, see the Polyglot Vegetarian: “Peanut” and “Peanut, Continued.”

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Sources:

Dunlap, William. Thirty Years Ago; or the Memoirs of a Water Drinker, vol. 2 of 2. New York: Bancroft and Holley, 1836, 25.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. peanut, n., peanut, adj.

Irving, Washington. “Letter 2” (1 December 1802). Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle. New York: William H. Clayton, 1824, 11–12. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

“The Modern Scipio.” Mountain Democrat (Placerville, California), 10 June 1876, 2. NewspaperArchive.com.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2005, modified December 2021, s.v. peanut, n. and adj.

Times-Picayune (New Orleans), 16 January 1867, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Twain, Mark (Samuel Clemens). “Those Blasted Children” (1864). Mark Twain’s San Francisco, Bernard Taper, ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963, 31. HathiTrust Digital Archive.

Wansey, Henry. The Journal of an Excursion to the United States of North America in the Summer of 1794. Salisbury: J. Easton, 1796, 250. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Photo credit. Unknown photographer, 1940s–50s, NBC Television. Public domain image in the United States as it was published in the United States between 1926–77 without a copyright notice.

Mississippi

25 January 2022

(Updated 28 January: added Ottawa etymology and Goddard citation.)

Detail of a 1673 map by Jacques Marquette showing the Mitchisipi River. A hand-drawn map of a large river showing Indigenous settlements on both banks.

The state of Mississippi has an Indigenous name, but not one from a language of the peoples who lived there at the time of European contact. Those people primarily spoke Muskogean languages, while the name Mississippi is from the Algonquian language group, most likely from the Ottawa missi-si·pi (large river). The state takes its name from the Mississippi river, which forms its western border. The name of the river entered into European languages via French explorers far to the north of what is now the state, near the river’s headwaters, hence the belief that it comes from Ottawa.

The name Mississippi, for the river, appears as Mitchisipi in a 1673 map by Jacques Marquette. It makes its way into English by 1698 in a translation of Henri de Tonti’s Account of Monsieur de la Salle’s Last Expedition and Discoveries in North America:

This Bay of Puans is formed by an overflowing of the Lake of the Illinois, occasion’d by a great River, which falls into this Lake. This River call’d Onisconcing comes from another Lake about 100 Leagues distant; from which comes another River, which falls into the Mississipi; and therefore this Lake may be lookt upon as a Communication between Canada and the Gulph of Mexico, as one may see by the Map.

The colonial masters of the region that is now the state of Mississippi changed several times over the course of the eighteenth century. Originally claimed by France, the region was ceded to Britain from France following the French and Indian War (Seven Years’ War). It was subsequently ceded to the United States following the American Revolution, which organized the Mississippi Territory in 1798, consisting of what is now the states of Mississippi and Alabama. The western half of the territory was admitted to the union in 1817 under the name Mississippi, and the eastern half was redesignated Alabama.

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Sources:

Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004.

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.

Goddard, Ives. “Mississippi.” Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of America, Newsletter 25.4, January 2007, 12–13. Archive.org.

Marquette, Jacques. Map of the New Discovery Made by the Jesuit Fathers in 1672. 1673. Library of Congress.

Tonti, Henri de. An Account of Monsieur de la Salle’s Last Expedition and Discoveries in North America. London: J. Tonson, et al. 1698, 24. Early English Books Online.

Image credit: Marquette, Jacques. Map of the New Discovery Made by the Jesuit Fathers in 1672. 1673. Library of Congress. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.