Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > The Origin of Certain Place Names In the United States
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Knormal
Nov 11, 2001

HugeGrossBurrito posted:

Helvetia- Name of a few places in the US settled by the Swiss and by them given the ancient name of Switzerland
Sacramento, CA was originally New Helvetia for this reason. It always makes me think of the Helvetica font.

Might as well ask about Sacramento, now you have me wondering. Obviously Sacramento is just Spanish for Sacrament, but does it say why it changed?

* # ¿ Oct 4, 2020 22:07
  • Quote
Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 15, 2024 16:46
  • Quote
Knormal
Nov 11, 2001

TeachesOfPeaches posted:

The book makes no mention of New Helvetia, either as its own entry or in the description for Sacramento. Sacramento does mean "the sacrament," but according to Wikipedia the city was named after the Sacramento River, which was named by Spanish cavalry officer Gabriel Moraga for the Santisimo Sacramento (Most Holy Sacrament), referring to the Catholic Eucharist.

The Wikipedia article for New Helvetia has this explanation:

The Swiss pioneer John Sutter (1803–1880) arrived in Alta California with other Euro-American settlers in August 1839. He established an agricultural and trading colony, with the stockade Sutter's Fort, and named it "Nueva Helvetia." It was located at the confluence of the Sacramento River and American River. In English the name means "New Switzerland", after Sutter's home country...The site of "Nueva Helvetia" is just a few miles east of where his son, John Sutter, Jr., established Sacramento, and is on the eastern edge of present-day downtown Sacramento.
Thanks, I never heard they were actually separate settlements from what I assume was a "gently caress you dad, I'm starting my own city" moment. I know Sutter's Fort was abandoned and fell into ruin because Sutter was apparently a pretty lovely businessman, so I guess everyone just kinda moved west a bit to live with Sutter 2. I guess it makes sense your book doesn't even mention New Helvetia then, since it has nothing to do with a current place name.


Play posted:

Definitely sounds like old English so probably just named after some random English town
Anything ending in -cester is usually the English name of an old Roman fort (castrum in Latin), so yeah it's a pretty safe bet it's named after Worcester England, which itself will be a corruption of "West Fort" or something.

* # ¿ Oct 11, 2020 05:26
  • Quote
Knormal
Nov 11, 2001

RFC2324 posted:

The folk option is always the correct option, even if it is less factual accurate
Herodotus' forum account identified.

* # ¿ Oct 11, 2020 20:05
  • Quote
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply
The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > The Origin of Certain Place Names In the United States