What's in a name?

What's in a name?

This past school year I spent some time substitute teaching — something I do occasionally — and completed a two-week stint with sixth graders assigned to read Sign of the Beaver, a coming-of-age story set in the interior of what would become Maine in 1769. The book, inspired by a true story of a young settler left for a summer on his own and befriended by a Native American, was written by Elizabeth George Speare and published in 1983. Speare was a two-time Newbery Medal winner known for historical fiction for children, yet her books are not without controversy — this novel in particular is contested for perpetuating Native American stereotypes through her use of a word now widely acknowledged as a slur toward Native women. This post isn't a diatribe about Speare's word choices. It's a recognition that names — and the naming of people, places, and things — have impact.

Juliet famously declared through Shakespeare's quill: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other word would smell as sweet." The bard was making the case that what something is called doesn't change what it truly is. But when a name is an ethnic slur, or a culturally significant name is deliberately erased, the differently-named rose can have a radically different meaning. As the voices of Native American tribes have been more heard in recent decades — and as both the Canadian and United States governments have begun to reckon with the intentional destruction of Native culture through legislation like the Civilization Fund Act of 1819 — society has started to understand the lasting damage done by negative stereotypes, name-calling, cultural genocide, and the supposed divine mandate of Manifest Destiny.

Many states and the federal government have recognized that place names can perpetuate harm or discount the voices of marginalized groups. A recent effort evaluated hundreds of mapped locations specifically to rename places containing a particular slur (note: this page is now archived by the current administration and marked as no longer active policy — which is itself telling) — an exercise in listening and collaboration across the table rather than by the decree of one side. Many of those new names became official only in the past few years. The USGS map showing those changes is linked here — though note that some federal websites hosting content related to derogatory place name removal have been archived or modified since January 2025.

Here in Michigan, many of our place names derive from Native American languages — including "Michigan" itself, from the Ojibwe word "mishigami," meaning "large water" or "great lake." Surrounded by four of the five Great Lakes, it's a perfect name. Twenty-seven other states have similarly-derived names. Ironically, Michigan's most famous Indian Agent, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft — who was fluent in Ojibwe and even married to an Ojibwe woman — chose to use his surveying authority to invent place names across the state that "sounded Indian" but weren't. Many places already had names. He renamed them anyway — sometimes to curry favor with President Andrew Jackson, sometimes simply to sever the connection with the Indigenous people being displaced as settlers moved in. The erasure of place names was the erasure of history. Tribes are still dealing with the consequences.

Schoolcraft was one man choosing to disregard long-established names without input from the people who gave them. History shows he's not alone. Denali — called "the High One" or "Great One" by Interior Alaska's Koyukon people for thousands of years — was renamed "Mount McKinley" in an 1897 newspaper article by a gold prospector who admired William McKinley's support for the gold standard. The name stuck despite Alaskans requesting an official change from the moment the state joined the union in 1959. (The national park surrounding the mountain was renamed Denali in 1980 — the mountain itself finally followed in 2015, when President Obama made it official.) The change was long overdue and widely celebrated — including by Alaska's own congressional delegation.

In January 2025, an Executive Order directed that the mountain be renamed back to McKinley. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, introduced a bill in February 2025 to restore the name Denali, saying simply: "In Alaska, it's Denali."

It's worth sitting with that for a moment. A name used by the Koyukon people for thousands of years — restored after decades of advocacy — reversed by executive action in the first weeks of a new administration. Not because "Denali" was inaccurate or offensive. Because someone preferred the other one.

This is not a partisan observation. It's a simple one: the very least we can do is respect place names that belonged to the people who were here first. When any name is no longer appropriate — for any reason — we should work together to choose anew. What we should not do is choose alone, or choose in ways that erase the people who named things long before we arrived.

The rose deserves to keep its name.

The photo is from my visit to Denali in July 2000, where we were lucky enough to see the peak during a sightseeing flight. The mountain is impossibly massive — you feel certain you're about to collide with it.