How did the tiny Alaska village of Chicken get its name? | Hacker News Reader

How did the tiny Alaska village of Chicken get its name?

adn.com

30 pointsrolph9 comments

I heard this story (no one could spell Ptarmigan) from my Dad probably forty years ago when I went up to visit him after her had moved up to Alaska for several years. I think the longevity of the yarn comes from the joy Alaska natives have in telling it to visitors or new arrivals.

Also, new Alaskans are called Cheechakos — make it through a winter or two and you become a Sourdough.

And then, "Texas doesn't like being the 2nd biggest state. Keep complaining though and we'll cut Alaska in half and make Texas the 3rd biggest."

The etymology of "Cheechako" is an interesting one, since it descends from Chinook Jargon (from the Columbia River Valley, originally) rather than (one might imagine) one of the native languages of Alaska or northern Canada.

There's a village here in my area called "Pipes". Every local calls it by this name, but the official name is completely different. There's a legend that there once were 3 old men smoking pipes on their porch who'd greet travellers.

Nearby, there's a village called "Bandits" - same thing, the official name is completely different, and the locals claim the village was founded by 3 fugitives who settled there.

I wonder how widespread is the phenomenon when the official name and the real name used by the locals are completely different (and the real name is usually silly).

i think this happens when the time comes to attract visitors for some reason, and the name is a marketing mismatch.

Near my hometown, there is a particular crossroads named Light-Pipe-Cross. It's on no map, but everyone has called it that for centuries and it appears in old documents as a supplementary colloquial name.

The story goes that because the distance between the crossroads and the old market square is exactly the right amount of time for you to smoke a pipe of tobacco before arriving, peasants going to market with their carts would stop there to light up.

I think names with stories attached have a way of surviving, because they become integrated into oral history.

I suspect both tourist and sensible origins are quite common.

Oxford was probably named after a ford where oxen crossed the river (although in Old Norse, so Öxnafurða originally).

Cambridge, despite the seemingly obvious name, seems to have been a bit weirder, as both the place and the river have been renamed after each other at different times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge#Medieval

The small villages of Washington[0][1] probably didn't mean "laundromat" in Anglo-Saxon, but the best guesses are equally mundane.

There's a few places called Battle, one of which is named after the Battle of Hastings because that was nearby. It's my favourite, because the name led to this: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Battle+Station+Car+Park

Hell (Norway) was probably just named for an overhang or cliff cave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell,_Norway

On the other hand, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch very explicitly got this name for tourist purposes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llanfairpwllgwyngyll

Likewise "Westward Ho!" (the exclamation point is part of the name), taking it's name from a 1855 novel written by Charles Kingsley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westward_Ho!

The place "Truth or Consequences" (New Mexico) manages to be both, because while it famously took the current name from a radio game show… the old name was "Hot Springs", which came from the nearby hot springs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_or_Consequences,_New_Mex...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_Tyne_and_Wear

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_West_Sussex

My Mother-in-law went to a music festival up there a few years ago.

And all I got is a lousy 'Chickenstock' hoodie...

I went to Chicken a couple years ago hoping to photograph Mountain Bluebirds, but they never showed. There were very cooperative Phoebe's though and after watching them for a long while, I saw that one had a real pattern to his hunting that involved this giant multi-story gold dredge. It would always fly out of a hole in a certain window, and eventually go back in a separate path. I am sure it was feeding babies inside that giant dredge somewhere.

Speaking of strange Alaskan village names, I like Mary's Igloo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary's_Igloo,_Alaska

Reply on news.ycombinator.com