Minnesota geographic names; their origin and historic significance
by Warren Upham
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ANOKA COUNTY The name of this county, established May 23, 1857, was taken from the town of Anoka, which was first settled in 1851-52 and was named in 1853. It is a Dakota or Sioux word, meaning, as Prof. A. W. Williamson wrote, on both sides; applied by founders to the city laid out on both sides of Rum river, show more and since applied to the county, of which this city is the county seat. Rev. Moses N. Adams, who came as a missionary to the Sioux in 1848 and learned their language, stated that, as a Sioux word, Anoka means the other side, or both sides. According to the late R. I. Holcombe and others, including Albert M. Goodrich, the historian of this county, the Ojibways also sometimes used a name of nearly the same sound for the Rum river and for the site of Anoka near its mouth, meaning where they work, on account of the extensive early lumbering and logndriving on this stream. The Ojibway verb, I work, is Anoki, as given in Baraga's Dictionary, with many inflected forms and compound words from this root, all referring to work in some way as their central thought. But the selection of the name Anoka had reference only to its use by the Dakota or Sioux people, whose language is wholly unlike that of the Ojibways. A newspaper article on this subject, written in 1873 by L. M. Ford, is quoted by Goodrich, as follows: The name for the new town was a topic of no little interest, and the writer had something to do in its selection. It was decided to give it an Indian name. The Dakota Lexicon, just published, and of which I was the owner of a copy, was not infrequently consulted and at length the euphonious name Anoka was decided upon. ... It was said to mean 'on both sides, ' when rendered into less musical English, and to this day the name is by no means inappropriate, as t.. show lessTags
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