"GaryM" wrote in message
2.112...
"Wolfgang" wrote in
:

"Batten" looks to me like it might be the equivalent of the German
"baden" and English "bathing." I'd guess there were some popular
swimming holes there a couple hundred years ago.

I started to re-read Merwin's book that I mentioned in a post last
night. Damn good book, by the way, even if you never plan on visiting
the place.

According to Merwin "Kill" is Dutch, as has been confirmed by others
here.

The word "Battenkill" was suggested by Esther Swift in her 1977 book
"Vermont Place Names" to be a contraction of Bart's Kill. Hmmm?

Leaving aside the rather peculiar notion that anyone would bother
contracting five letters to six, one is still left wondering by what
mechanism such a radical change would have been accomplished. The ways in
which the meanings, pronunciations and spellings of place names change over
time have long been carefully studied. Certain patterns, or descriptive
rules if you will, have emerged as a result. It's been a long time since I
studied this stuff but this one appears to violate at least a couple of
those rules. First, and probably most important, evolution tends to
shorten, not lengthen, names. Thus, the tetrasyllabic Wor-ces-ter-shire
becomes the trisyllabic Woos-tuh-shur. Vowels (as I hope my quick and dirty
attempt at something like phonetic spelling demonstrates) tend to become
more slurred. The bottom line is that such changes are not random. It may
take a while to ferret out how and why changes occur.....and often enough
the chain can never be fully reconstructed.....but there is always a sort of
logic to them. Getting "Battenkill" out of "Bart's Kill" looks like a
pretty tough trick. Methinks Ms. Swift was reaching a bit.

"Batten" in archaic English means to fertilize or enrich.

And in modern English its use has to do with holding or fastening. Looks
like there isn't much help in either of those.

Most likely though the stream gets its name from the word Batavia,
which is the ancient name for the people of the Western European
lowlands that eventually became Holland. The Dutch settled this
region and there is (or was, since the book was written in 1992) a
project to translate their archaic writings from that time called the
"New Netherlands Project" in Albany. It was even suggested that the
origin of the word Batavia and Batten are the same. There is a
Batavia Kill and a Batavia, New York. In that case Battenkill means
"river of the Dutch".

Shortening "Batavian Kill" to "Battenkill" seems very
plausible.....especially if there is already an etymological connection
between Batavia and batten. It would help a lot to know exactly what that
alleged connection is.

It's Indian names we

Ondawa (Iroquoian) "White Stream" or "Country of Rounded Hills"

I've seen and heard many such either/or translations and they have always
perplexed me. I mean, I can see why there might be some uncertainty about
whether a name in a little known language might mean "the valley where the
tall pointy spruces grow" or "the valley where where the tall pointy
tamaracks grow" (I'm pretty certain that everyone I know is aware that there
are many kinds of conifers and are familiar with the words pine, spruce,
hemlock, fir, etc., but most of them are not very good at distinguishing
between them and tend to refer to all of them generically as "pines"), but
if anyone can translate well enough to make any sense of a name at all, a
"white stream" shouldn't be that difficult to distinguish from a "rounded
hill."

Tyetilegogtakook (Mahican, not Welsh)"Country around the River of
Toads" (thousands of toads migrate to the swamps and backwaters every
year).

Actually, I think that one IS Welsh......well, if you read it backwards,
anyway.

Probably more that you wanted,

Nah, I love this ****.

but thanks to this thread I'll be glad
to reread this book agai (that, and the Hendricksons but 5 weeks
away)!

Good luck with both, and thanks.

Wolfgang