Year: 1956
Type: article
Abstract: the General Assembly of the Virginia colony prepared a set of petitions to be submitted to the officials of the Virginia Company in London.Among the articles in the document is one in which it is stated that the colonists hope that the officials "wilbe pleased to change the savage name of Kiccowtan, and to give that Incorporation a new name."lEvidently the officials acted promptly on what they probably considered a minor matter.In a document dated May 7, 1620, requiring certain boroughs in Virginia to erect guest houses for newly-arrived settlers, the name Kicowtan (sic) is followed by the parenthetical explanation that it "hereafter shall be called Elizabeth City, by the name of his 1'vlaiesties [i.e., James I's] most vertuous and reno\vned Daughter."2The parentheses make it clear that the change in name had been accomplished officially by another document and that here the Virginians were merely being reminded of it.These obscure remarks in the records of the Virginia Company explain in a large measure the general attitude of the early settlers in the Virginia colony towards the Indian place names that they found in their new homeland.On the one hand, it was natural linguistically for the English-speaking settlers to bestow English names on the ne\v land; and on the other hand, it is not surprising that they took pains to replace Indian names \vhen they considered them savage and heathen names not worthy of preservation by civilized Christian men.Thus, English place names have always predominated in Tidewater Virginia 3 from the time of its discovery do\vn to today.From the moment that the discoverers and the settlers first set foot on Virginia soil, they began to give English names to the new lands.The discoverers in calling the country Virginia derived that
Source: Names
Author: P. Burwell Rogers
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2076204088