Where do our names come from? PLACE names, that is.
Hard to tell, sometimes! Such facts are often lost in the mists of time, perhaps supplanted by entertaining tales.
Supposedly a mother along the Chemung River was constantly calling for her little girl, ELMIIIIIIIRA! So when time came to pick an official name (for the post office), local folks chose the name of the outdoor-loving little girl.
Maybe. But at least as likely, maybe not. All entertaining stories about place names need to be taken with a healthy amount of skepticism.
The Horseheads story, on the other hand, actually seems legit. Sullivan’s army, pulling out for Easton after devastating the Iroquois country, decided that they had to move faster, and so shot their exhausted horses. The pile of skulls was a landmark on the river for many years.
Likewise it seems that Penn Yan may well have been named for the Yankees and Pennsylvanians who settled there, though the tale of the solomonic elder rebuking their parochialism, and bringing about conciliation, may be a fable.
Some places (Big Flats, Watkins Glen) were named for landmarks or geographic features, and others (Painted Post) for landmarks created by people.
Absentee landowners (Bath, Pulteney, Corning, Troupsburg) were always popular. So were landowners actually on the ground – Erwin, Cameron, Dansville, Lindsey, Rochester. Heroes of the Revolution (Steuben, Schuyler, Wayne, Monroe, Washington, Lafayette) were frequently honored.
Early land agent Charles Williamson may have started the custom of naming promising sites (Geneva, Lyons, Naples, Moravia) after prominent European communities. It was surely a marketing ploy, offering a hint of heritage and stability to what were sometimes just spots in the forest.
Steuben County has a knot of names from the Mexican War (Fremont, Sonora, Buena Vista, Monterey, Rough and Ready), and at least one (Atlanta) from the Civil War.
Such names as Chemung, Cohocton, Keuka, Tuscarora, and MANY more came (though often mangled) from the languages of those who were Native here before Europeans muscled in.
Of course western New York is famed for the classical names scattered across its landscape… Syracuse, Attica, Palmyra, Marcellus, Manlius, Macedon. Thus may gave been in an effort to lift the tone of the place. The same is true with a community named for the sweet vale of Avoca so famed in song, or those named for poets and literary figures (Dryden, Addison).
The arrival of railroads (bearing tourists!) may have helped fuel an improve-our-names trend in the late 19th century. Would you rather spend the summer at Poor Lake… or Loon Lake? Mud Lake… or Lamoka? We can find plenty of other changes such as Little Lake-Waneta Lake, Crooked Lake-Keuka Lake, Bloods-Cohocton.
More than anybody else the railroads and the post office needed names. Sometimes spots HAD no names, and needed to be supplied. Other times the names were unprintable, and had to be replaced. Railroad magnates such as Mr. Sayre were probably quite pleased to find themselves on the map.
Look at those timetables, look at old maps, and you’ll find old, almost-forgotten names, such as Beartown, Taggarts, and Lumber City. Likewise open up the Meteorological Service web site, and click on random locations in your county, and you’ll start to wonder: just what were Hermitage and Haverling Heights? Bennetts, Purdy Creek, Lent Hill, Cold Springs? And what happened to them? They were “places” once, some with their own schools and stores and churches, all now vanished like snow on the desert face.