From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name, Claim, and Inflame [Paperback]

No "Nigger" has been on the US map for fifty years, and most instances of "Squaw" and "Jap" were eliminated shortly thereafter, but we still have the occasional "Wop" or "Chink". You may not even know what a toponym is (it is simply a name for a place), but cartographers not only use toponyms, they try to get them right, and they don't mean to offend anyone, but sometimes they do. The offense isn't always ethnic; it might be international or personal or salacious. You might think that toponymy (the study of toponyms) would be a fairly dull academic endeavor, and surely this is the case most of the time. However, _From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name, Claim, and Inflame_ (University of Chicago Press), professor of geography Mark Monmonier shows just how contentious map naming and renaming can be. The book is an academic reflection on problems humans make for themselves in their busy name-finding (and name-calling) efforts, but with its illustrations of problems in naming, it is also a greatly amusing book.

It is hard to blame the original mapmakers. People attached names like Nigger Pond, Chinks Peak, or Squaw River because that is the way settlers talked. Then the mapmakers and surveyors came in, and "conscientiously but uncritically recorded local usage." The U.S. Board on Geographic Names handles requests to change objectionable names. In 1963, every cartographic instance of "nigger" was eliminated. Thus, "Niggerhead Point" which had appeared on a map of Port Bay in upstate New York could not stand. The solution for 1963 was to substitute the then current replacement term so that the feature became "Negrohead Point". Monmonier writes, "In the early 1960s, Negro had not yet acquired the distaste that led to its sequential replacement among more ethnically sensitive speakers, if not on maps, by _black_, _African American_, and _people of color_." It remains "Negrohead Point" on federal maps, but local New York agencies have simplified the issue, thankfully not changing it to "People of Color-Head Point" but to "Graves Point", perhaps because of a cemetery there. Sometimes the renaming is not that simple. The use of "squaw" is "the thorniest issue in applied toponymy." While there are those who say the term only means a Native American woman, many have argued that it is an ugly synonym for vagina which is then applied to women. There has been a proposal for another blanket change, from "Squaw" to "Moose", so that Maine now has a Moose Bosom. At least it still has a bosom. There are many other instances of naming naughtiness here. In Oregon is Whorehouse Meadows, a bawdy toponym that did record the historic instance of a field bordello. The Bureau of Land Management changed its maps to the silly name "Naughty Girl Meadows", but residents and historians agree that the original name is best.

There are serious issues in Monmonier's book. A chapter covers the knotty problems, for instance, of toponyms in disputed areas like Cyprus or around Israel. There are implications to mapping that can cost millions; when Microsoft released Windows 95, it used a time-zone map that omitted disputed provinces claimed by India, which thereupon refused to allow Windows 95 to be imported. (Microsoft has subsequently established a Geopolitical Product Strategy Team to cover cartographic pitfalls.) But it is in less consequential details that the book is the most amusing. Who would have thought, for instance, than canny mapmakers would deliberately place nonexistent streets on their maps and give them names, just to see who copied their work in violation of copyright? Then there was the Finnish family in Paska, Ontario, who objected that their town (named for the word "shallow" in Cree) sounded too much like the Finnish word for excrement, and got the name changed. Every two years a bill to keep "Mount McKinley", rather than the local and native "Denali", for the Alaskan peak is submitted by an Ohio Congressman who is a fan of the Ohio-born President McKinley and who knows that the Board of Geographic Names cannot change a name if the matter is also being considered by Congress. There is even a section on how features on the Moon and planets are named, and how for $54 you can get a parchment certificate that shows that a particular star has been named for you, although such names have exactly zero support from the official celestial namers, the International Astronomical Union. This is a delightful book about a serious and amusing subject that few readers will have ever before encountered.

The best thing about this book seems to be its amusing title. It stars out very technical with `map terms' and things that would only interest serious cartographers- which I am not. It is very unfortunate, because this book could have been a really interesting narrative on American history and its conscience.

Though there are a few interesting examples of words used to describe places or geographic anomalies, the story is quite flat. One read-through of the back cover is all that is needed to know that once in the US there were many places that took the name of `nipple', `jap', `nigger' and `squaw' which he says is translated loosely to mean `whore' in many Indian languages. But the background information on these is lacking and the reasons for change are boring.

The author obviously knows his subject, and likes to use numbers and facts to support his case, but do we really need to know what number of `japs' were on a certain State Dept map? The answer is obviously no. It suffices to say that there were any at all, that is is unacceptable. The most interesting parts of the book were the sections discussing naming places in space (like on the moon) and on the sea floor. But this too was thin and just didn't tell much.

Much of the book is very repetitive and keeps brining up the few shocking examples of place names as mentioned above. But these spares examples quickly became tiresome and are not enough to base an entire book on! I was really looking forward to finding out new information, but was thoroughly bored and sorry I bought the book. This subject- as this author has attacked it- should have been a journal article and not a book.

This is all really unfortunate, because this book could have been so much more. It reads more like a report by the United States Board on Geographical Names. A simple list of current names and all its derivations- historical and linguistic would have been preferred, as it would have saved the time of reading a text with no depth. I think all the positive reviews of the book are misplaced and based on the title and a quick scan of the book. Because as soon as the shock of some of the place names wears off the text shows it true dull colors.

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