A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, so Shakespeare said. But does a name make the thing named, the way clothes are said to make the man? That sort of argument is, as the song proclaimed, bustin' out all over.
In Minnesota it's not even a four-letter word that's at issue. It's the word "squaw," which has been used for as long as memory serves to mean an Indian woman, especially a wife. It's from the Algonquin language, in which it meant simply "woman." The French corrupted it to mean female genitals, and that's what started all the current trouble.
Indians living in Minnesota complained about the many places bearing the name "squaw," such as Squaw Pond, Squaw Creek and Squaw Lake, of all of which there were dozens. As a result, the state legislature ordered Minnesota's counties to rename all geographic features containing the offending word.
Most of them complied. But not Lake County, one of the nation's last frontiers, nestling right up against Lake Superior. Officials there said they saw nothing offensive about a word in common use in 1050 places in the United States, and besides it would cost thousands of dollars to change all the maps just to rename the county's Squaw Creek and Squaw Bay.
To demonstrate their good faith, and hang the cost, they offered to change those names to Politically Correct Creek and Politically Correct Bay. But the state officials would have none of that. At this writing county and state are at an impasse, each planning its next move, sort of like the Russians and the Chechens.
But the squawking is spreading, as these things will. Arizona is thinking about eliminating its squaw names, and California is getting ready to change the name of Squaw Gulch, up in Siskiyou County, to Taritsi Gulch. We don't know what Taritsi means, but we'll bet that somebody will show up that it offends, and they'll have to change the name again. So far nobody is talking about changing Squaw Valley, where once the Winter Olympics were held.
This is the biggest name rhubarb since 1967, when the Board on Geographic Names, a federal agency, ordered that 143 places named Nigger and 26 named Jap be changed to something else. That, at least, made sense, because a lot of people were offended by those names. But they had to hunt real hard to find anyone who is offended by "squaw."
Meanwhile an outfit calling itself People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, apparently looking to make trouble, says the village of Fishkill, which is in New York state, ought to change its name because the name is cruel.
Mayor George Carter doesn't agree. He says Fishkill has had its name since the 1600s, and besides the name has nothing to do with killing fish; it's from the Dutch word "kill," which means "stream." The term is widely used throughout the Hudson River valley, which the Dutch settled.
PETA's answer is that the real meaning of the word doesn't mean anything because lots of people think it means something else. There's logic for you.
So far there's no word from cat lovers demanding changes in the names of the town Catskill and the Catskill Mountains.
All of this squabbling pales beside the problem of a town in the Gascon part of France. It's name is Condom.
Now, in France, a name like that shouldn't matter. It's not pronounced the way it is in English, and it means nothing but a name. The French called condoms "priservatifs."
But Anglo tourists keep stealing the town signs, and when a town bus bearing the name went to the Netherlands a couple of years ago it was laughed at. Trust the Dutch to know what condom means.
Undismayed, Mayor Girard Dubrac of Condom wants to exploit the name to draw tourists. He wants to set up a permanent center of information on contraceptives, and has persuaded the town to spend $25,000 on feasibility studies. He has 799 "objects" ready for display in a museum, which we presume would be called the Musie de Condom.
Back in squaw country, meanwhile, a Brooklyn resident wrote the New York Times to suggest that Squaw Creek and Squaw Bay be renamed Leech Creek and Leech Bay. "Leech," he wrote, " is an archaic word for physician or healer. Who could find it derogatory?"
The writer's name: John Leech.
Bruce Ellis: brucee@chunder.com, Home.