What’s in a name? History

Charlottesville Daily Progress
Published: April 26, 2008

Virginia has some pretty cool place names, but Alaska may have us beat.
Can we match Dakeekathlrimjingia Point or Nunathloogagamiutbingoi Dunes?
A Virginia resident may be the authority on Alaska place names. Donald Orth compiled the “Dictionary of Alaska Place Names” in 1967 for the U.S. Geological Survey, for which he worked as a geographer and cartographer. The book was revised in 1971, and now a new edition is being brought out by a private publisher.
This edition will delve into some of the history of place names.
There’s Lost Temper Creek, named after an untoward camp incident, and there‘s Big Loss Creek (also known as Mishap Creek), where a lighthouse keeper stripped naked before crossing the stream and tried to toss his clothes to the opposite bank to keep them from getting wet. He didn’t throw long, and instead had to watch his clothing drift downstream.
There’s also Eek, Chicken and Atlasta Creek.
Eek is derived from an Eskimo word meaning “two eyes,” Chicken supposedly was named by miners who wanted to name their town for the ptarmigan but didn’t know how to spell it, and Atlasta comes from a wife who, when she saw the first building go up in a frontier town, exclaimed: “At last a house!” (Not all these stories are from the Orth book; some come from the Associated Press.)
Mr. Orth has worked on place-name projects in all 50 states.
He’s retired now, and living in Reston — which also happens to be the home base for the USGS.
But, before you ask, we still don’t know what Nunathloogagamiutbingoi and Dakeekathlrimjingia mean.

You better think

In a long history of “dumb criminal” stories, this is one of the best yet.
In Cleveland police say a carjacker pulled up beside a television news crew to ask for directions to a bank.
A news crew. With cameras. And a journalistic instinct (one would hope) for recognizing the unusual when they saw it.
Nor was it as if the suspect had hi-jacked the car, dumped the driver and taken off alone.
No, the driver was still at the wheel. With a gun pointed at him.
The driver managed to let the news crew know that he was in trouble. The crew alerted police and followed the car until police arrived.
A final odd tidbit: The crew was filming a story on bank problems at the time. The report doesn’t say, but we’d be willing to bet the crew was standing in front of a bank when the suspect pulled up and asked directions to a bank.