Why Minneapolis is pronounced differently from Minnetonka


Although I've never been purified in the waters of Lake Minnetonka, I did grow up in Minneapolis. I lived not far from where the Artist Formerly Known as Prince lived, near the lake formerly known as Calhoun. And just in case you're wondering what "Minneapolis" means, it's a combination of a Sioux word for water and a Greek word for city. Minne is used a lot where I grew up, just a block from Minnehaha Creek. Yes, that means "laughing water". I really don't recall ever visiting Lake Minnetonka, but I'm sure I did, it wasn't really all that far from my neighborhood. Hang on, I'll see if I can find what the "tonka" in Minnetonka means. Here ya go:

"Minnetonka is in Hennepin County Minne (also spelled mini) is the common Dakota word for water, and tonka (also spelled tanka) is likewise their common word meaning big or great, but the name thus compounded seems not to have been used by the Dakota till Ramsey coined it for the lake."

Since I grew up in Minneapolis, I have the typical Twin Cities accent, which I call "the man on the six o'clock news", which for no reason that I can imagine is considered the "no accent" American accent. Every radio announcer all over the country sounds like me, and it's not to be confused with a rural Minnesota accent, which sounds much more Canadian, the most famous line being, "I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper?", from the movie "Fargo". Prince did not talk like that, nor do I.

And today as I was saying "Minneapolis" and "Minnetonka" to myself, I found myself using an EE sound for Minn-e-apolis, and an "Uh" sound for Minn-uh-tonka, which I'd never noticed before. And the only reason I can say is that's how they seem to roll off the tongue.

Actually, I lived near Lake Nokomis!

If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. If you like Phoenix history and would like to help support my efforts to preserve and share precious digital historic images, please consider becoming a patron. Thank you!

Become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more