Today the University of Alaska Board of Regents unanimously endorsed the adoption of the name Troth Yeddha' as the name of the ridge on which the Fairbanks campus is located. The name is among the more than 1000 place names which have been documented in the Lower Tanana Athabaskan language. It is one of a suite of names in the area based on the word troth, meaning 'Indian potato' (Hedysarum alpinum). We owe a great debt to Robert Charlie, Annette Freiberger, and James Kari, who attended the Board of Regents meeting, armed with maps of Lower Tanana place names.
Troth Yeddha' was previously endorsed by the regents in 2008 as the name for a new park to be located on the ridge, but the current name proposal is unique in that it endorses a name for a geographic feature, not just a university facility. The Board's endorsement will strengthen an application to the USGS for official name status.
The name proposal had already gathered strong support when it was summarily removed from the February Board of Regents meeting. A similar fate seemed possible this time after the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported Tuesday that there appeared to be some controversy behind the name proposal. There may well be some uncertainty regarding the ultimate origin of the name Troth Yeddha', but this is true of many names, both Native and non-Native. The etymology of the Alaskan town of Nome remains uncertain, yet no one questions the validity of this place name. The debate about Troth Yeddha' confused the validity of the name with the certainty of its etymology, yet the two issues are quite distinct. Whatever the name's etymology, there is no doubt that Troth Yeddha' is now the name for the ridge at UAF. Indeed, this same name was proposed to the university administration by Michael Krauss more than 30 years ago. In any case, the significance of the name Troth Yeddha' lies not in its etymology but in its reflection of a long-standing Athabaskan presence on the land now occupied by the University of Alaska.
This is truly an historic event, though perhaps not the first time a university campus has officially endorsed an indigenous place name. Rick Caulfield, Provost at the University of Alaska Southeast, points out that the Juneau campus is located on Auke Lake, a name which has been recognized by USGS since 1929. This name derives from the Tlingit name Áak'w, meaning literally 'little lake'. Of course the difference with today's decision is that Troth Yeddha' doesn't just derive from a Native name, it is the Native name, in the proper orthography. Either way, this leaves Anchorage as the only major campus in the University of Alaska system without a Native name. Linguist James Kari suggests the Dena'ina Athabaskan name Chanshtnu, which refers to Chester Creek (and in fact is the origin of the Chester in the English name). Of course, changing Chester Creek to Chanshtnu or even Auke Lake to Áak'w would be complicated by the fact that those places already have official names. In contrast, the ridge at UAF currently lacks an official name. Still, it is great to see the University of Alaska leading the way in repatriating indigenous names. Hats off to the UA Board of Regents.
[revised 2012-06-11]
Is this Wikipedia paragraph about the etymology of Alaska accurate?
ReplyDelete"The name "Alaska" (Аляска) was already introduced in the Russian colonial period, when it was used only for the peninsula and is derived from the Aleut alaxsxaq, meaning "the mainland" or, more literally, "the object towards which the action of the sea is directed".[6] It is also known as Alyeska, the "great land", an Aleut word derived from the same root."
Bright's (2004) Native American Placenames of the United States lists the origin as the Unangan (Aleut) word alaxsxix̂, meaning literally ‘the object toward which the action of the sea is directed’. The spelling Alyeska is just a variant of Alaska.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, I revised the post this morning to include the example of Nome, which better exemplifies the problem. While some people mistakenly believe that Alaska means 'the great land', there is general agreement among scholars that it actually derives from Unangan word above. On the other hand, while there are many theories about the origin of Nome, there is no agreement.