PLACE-NAMES IN IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES Concerning the Giving of Swedish Place-Names in America FOLKE HEDBLOM Translated by WESLEY WESTERBERG Where history is silent, the land itself often speaks through the names of its rivers and mountains, its villages and farms. Place-names are without question to be counted among the most enduring creations of human thought. ESAIAS TEGNÉR, the Younger, Ur språkens värld, III. Swedish emigration to North America during the latter half of the nineteenth century is without comparison the greatest in the history of Sweden. Approximately 1.3 million Swedes—a significant part of the nation's population—sailed over the At• lantic and established new homes for themselves and their fami• lies in the far-flung territory of the West. Compared with this folk migration, earlier emigrations from Scandinavia, like the Viking invasions of Normandy and of the British isles, appear almost insignificant. If on the other hand we were to assume for the sake of argument that nothing would be known in the future about Swedish colonization in America except what is derived from place-names, the comparison would be otherwise. The mi• gration to the New World would then seem to be a relatively minor episode. It is a known fact that there are a good many Swedish names on the map of modern America. An annotated list made by the American-Swedish writer, Vilhelm Berger, was published in Namn och Bygd, III (1938). The list seems to be representative and fairly complete. Even if various names could be added here and there, they would not distort the overall picture either of the character of the treasury of American-Swedish place-names 246 that have been preserved or of its relative size and geographical distribution.1 Berger accounts for a total of approximately 225 different names. The same names appear in several places, for example, Stockholm, Vasa, New Sweden, et al. The number of places with Swedish names in the United States and Canada is about 300.2 In Normandy alone the number of Scandinavian place-names far exceeds this figure. Names which include tomt or toft, as in• vestigated by Bengt Holmberg, add up to 346.3 No accurate count is available on other names with Scandinavian origin. Still more numerous are the Scandinavian place-names in England and Scotland and the other British islands.4 They could well num• ber in the thousands. Even if one takes into consideration the fact that the frequency of place-names in America is in general less than in Europe,5 this comparison would show that there is no direct, simple connection between the number of immi• grants and the number of place-names they bequeathed to pos• terity. "According to information in L. ljungmark, Den stora utvandringen (The Great Emigration, a textbook for Sveriges Radio, Stockholm, 1965), pp. 139 ff. O. R. Landelius, Göteborg author, has an unpublished collection of more than 800 place-names of Swedish origin in America. Included in it also are various Swedish names which have been given by Americans in an American setting and therefore do not indicate Swedish residence. The place-names referred to by Ljungmark are in all cases the same type as the names in Berger's list. Some additional names of the same kind are found in E. Gustav Johnson, "The Study of American Place-Names of Swedish Origin," in Covenant Quarterly, Nov., 1946, and in his "Place- Names and Swedish Pioneers," in Bulletin oj The American Swedish In• stitute, Minneapolis, Vol. V, No. 3, Sept. 1950. approximate figures, including even names of churches, children's homes, etc., in cities. It is often uncertain, from an American point of view, what should be regarded as duplication, as for example: Alfsborg, Elfsborg, Ells- burg, named for Älvsborg in Sweden. SB. Holmberg, "Tomt och toft som appelativ och ortnamnselement," and literature cited in Skrifter utgivna av Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien, XVII. See also: J. A. des Gautries, "Les noms de personnes scandinaves en Normandie de 911 å 1066," Nomina Germanica, XI, and literature cited. "In Lincolnshire alone there are c. 250 names ending in -by and over 100 ending in -torp, according to P. Skautrup, Det Danske Sprogs Historie (History of the Danish Language), I, pp. 99ff. See also especially Harald Lindkvist, Middle-English Place-Names of Scandinavian Origin, I; E. Björkman in Namn och Bygd, 1, pp. 80ff.; E. Ekwall, "The Scandinavian Element," in English Place-Name Society, I; and A. H. Smith, "English Place-Name Elements," Parts 1, 2, in English Place-Name Society, XXV- VI. For Scotland see, among others, articles by W. F. H. Nicolaisen in Scottish Studies. "George R. Stewart, Names on the Land (New York, 1945; rev. ed., Boston, 1958), pp. 418, 444. See also Georgacas's review in Names, VIII, p. 91. 247 The area settled by Swedes in the United States extends es• sentially all the way across the northern part of the country. The Southern states, except for Kansas and Texas, with their warm climate did not attract the Swedes. The densest agglomera• tion of Swedish immigrants around the turn of the century occurred in the North Central states: northern Illinois, Min• nesota, Nebraska, and Michigan. Other strong concentrations of Swedes are to be found in the East—in the New York-Boston area, in the western corner of the state of New York and ad• joining districts—and in the Pacific Northwest. To these areas must be added the neighboring provinces of Canada. Swedish settlements occur more sporadically in intervening states. • By superimposing on a map the place-names catalogued by Berger, the picture of Swedish settlement is shown more clearly concentrated in the upper Middle West and more specifically Minnesota. More than one-third of all the names are found in this state. Illinois, which taken as a whole has more Swedes than Minnesota, turns up only five names, and the large Swedish population in the East and the far West only a few names. The explanation of this sharp difference between Minnesota and Illinois, for example, is obviously to be found in the differ• ent types of settlements. In Minnesota Swedes were a rural people and in Illinois they were urban. Swallowed up by such metrop• olises as Chicago, Rockford, Rock Island, Moline, and others, the immigrants did not contribute place-names aside from sporadic names for churches, homes for the aged, and similar institutions. In 1930,6 46.1% of the Minnesota Swedes lived in the country, but in Illinois the rural population comprised only 13.8% of first- and second-generation Swedes. In terms of the strictly "rural- farm" population, the figures are 32.5 and 7% respectively. Even in the West Coast states and in the East the relative number of city dwellers is large. Whether or not a group of immigrants generates place-names depends on the type of settlement, al• though other factors are also involved. The Swedish names which have survived on American maps strike the researcher as repetitious and meager. Approximately "Statistical information from H. Nelson, The Swedes and the Swedish Settlements in North America, 2 vols. (Skrifter utgivna av Kungliga Hu• manistiska Vetenskapssamfundet i Lund), XXXVII. 248 one-third of them are names of places in Sweden: Stockholm, Falun, Malmo, Boxholm, Smolan, etc. The next largest group comprises adapted Swedish surnames like Carlson, Erickson, Dahlgren, Holmquist, or Christian names like Erick, Oscar, Man• da, Olivia. Even nature names follow the same pattern: Bloom Lake, Skogman Lake, Lake Oscar, Ericsson Peake, Point Stock• holm. The "generics"7 in these latter names are borrowed from the English. The same is true with compound settlement names like Hansonville, Munterville, and Palm Valley. Strict Swedish combinations have often been anglicized; along with Lindsborg and Mariadal can be found Swanburg, and Ericksdale. The spelling is sometimes adapted to English pronunciation: Larsson to Lawson, Vasa to Wausa. Difficult sound sequences are avoided by transposing to corresponding words or forms in English: Biskopskulla to "Bishop Hill," Nya Sverige to "New Sweden." Such names in our context must be considered Swedish in spite of the form; they have been applied in most cases by Swedes themselves. Biblical names also appear, as a rule, in connection with churches and congregations: Betania, Salemsborg. In some places a congregation has been divided into districts; in Vasa, Minnesota, were found Kyrkroten, Göta roten, Skåne, Väster• botten, et al.8 These types of name-giving follow the pattern that was cus• tomary in nineteenth-century America and was inherited from colonial times. Both the native Americans and the immigrants from different countries gave their new settlements place-names or proper names taken from the old country: Cambridge, Paris, Toledo, Lincoln, Bismarck, Thomas. Generics like -burg and -ville were popular at times and were combined with "specifics" from different languages.9 For the Swedes, this type of name- giving was well known from the homeland. New settlements in Norrland, in the northern part of Sweden, received names like Småland and Sibirien, and parishes received names like Gustav 'Swedish place-name research lacks internationally applicable terms for förled and efterled. American researchers use "specifics" and "generics." See Stewart, op. cit., p. 452, with references, and the journal Names. "E. Norelius, Vasa Illustrata, p. 189. "Stewart, op. cit. See distribution charts opposite p. 257. O. Springer, "Ortsnamen in der Neuen Welt" (Place-names in the New World), in Germ.-Roman. Monatsschrift, XXI, pp. 125 ff. 249 Adolf and Vilhelmina.10 Common to these Swedish names in America is the fact that they arose from a deliberate attempt to fix names; places were "christened." Most of the non-Indian names on the map originated in the same way.