Talk:List of Ohio county name etymologies

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List of Ohio county name etymologies is a featured list, which means it has been identified as one of the best lists produced by the Wikipedia community. If you see a way this page can be updated or improved without compromising previous work, feel free to contribute.

Contents 1 Difficult to understand 2 Initial Discussion 3 Geauga county: no mention of word Sheauga, Grand river name? 4 Indian changed to American Indian 5 Citations

[edit] Difficult to understand

Under the Columbiana entry, this line occurs:

Howe states "Kilbourn, in his 'Gazeteer,' says: 'Columbiana is a fancy name, taken from the names Columbus and Anna'"

I first thought that this line was gibberish, but after deleting it and having someone re-instate it, I realize it isn't completely meaningless. Someone should change way it is written, perhaps even adding the source that this information ACTUALLY appears in, as opposed to a text that cites this information.Acewolf359 14:59, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Initial Discussion

Why were all the references to "Indians" replaced with "Native Americans"? PedanticallySpeaking 14:51, August 6, 2005 (UTC)

Defiance County: The Battle of Fallen Timbers (U.S. victory, 1794) was not "the worst defeat ever suffered by the U.S. Army against the Indians"! Look it up for yourself! Corrected back once again to "St. Clair's Defeat". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.60.185.28 (talk • contribs).

[edit] Geauga county: no mention of word Sheauga, Grand river name?

Howe's text (ref. #6 in article) describes the following etymology in the Geauga county section:

The name Geauga, or Sheauga, signifies, in the Indian language, raccoon: it was originally applied to Grand river; thus, "Sheauga sepe," i.e. Raccoon River.

I have also found Sheauga mentioned in a separate source: the article in the article "ORIGIN OF OHIO PLACE NAMES". Ohio History 14: 278.

The Grand River was called Sheauga, or "Raccoon," by the Indians, hence, Geauga County;

Any reason this detail shouldn't be mentioned? Wanted to discuss before I edited, since this is a featured list. --KeithB 18:50, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Indian changed to American Indian

I feel that the term "Indian" in the lead is ambiguous, and assumes an Anglo-American perspective. I note that there has been some flipping back and forth between "Indian" and "Native American" throughout the history of this article. The term "American Indian" would seem an acceptable comprimise, and specifies the meaning of "Indian" throughout the remainder of the article, although perhaps this definition should be stated explicitly in the lead as well? --KeithB 16:07, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Citations

The method used to cite references is IMO hard to use and doesn't follow either Harvard referencing or the footnote system. I suggest this article be revised to use the Cite.php footnote system as described in Wikipedia:Footnotes. Colin Harkness°^Talk 16:34, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea. You have my support if you care to start. :) JonathanFreed 17:06, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll jump in and get it started. --KeithB 17:18, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I shall be away for a few days. If you haven't finished by then, I could help. I don't, however, have access to any of these books so would be unable to give page-specific citations. Are you able to do this? If so, consider following the suggestion in Wikipedia:Footnotes of having separate Notes and References sections, where the notes are just eg. "Stewart 1945:43" for page 43 of American Place Names. Then your references can remain pretty much unchanged (except bullet-points and alphabetical on author). Also, convert the refs to use {{cite book}} or equivalent hand-formatting if you don't like templates.

If you don't have page numbers, then just use Notes and follow the guidelines on how to cite a footnote more than once. Colin Harkness°^Talk 18:11, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

No, I don't have the books readily available, so I was thinking of the latter option. I may be able to find some of these books in the library, but that could take some time. I do prefer to use the citation templates. --KeithB 19:07, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Still working at this. Have a preliminary copy in my sandbox. Thing that bothers me with this method is all the backlinks that are created in the references section. Makes it look cluttered, and isn't really necessary. I have been trying to find a way to suppress the backlinks, if possible. --KeithB 05:44, 22 November 2006 (UTC)