The first installment in this series suggested that the settlement south of the mouth ofthe Winooski River came to be called “Burlington” becauseof a clerical error.
This week, we’re tracing the originsof that river’s name. And this etymological investigation appears tolead to a marketing ploy by 18th-century real estate speculators.
“The river’s name has caused moredispute than any other place name in Vermont,” historian EstherMunroe Swift wrote in her 1977 book, Vermont Place Names. Disagreements begin with how to render into English the Algonquin (orAbenaki) word for the 95-mile-long river that rises in Cabot andempties into Lake Champlain.
To Swift, it’s “Winooskitook” — which, she tells us, should be pronounced “Weenooskee.”Frederick Wiseman, an Abenaki scholar, transliterates the name as”Winosik” in an essay included in The Mills atWinooski Falls, edited by Laura Krawitt. And local historianVincent Feeney goes with “Winoskitegw” in his 2002 book, The Great Falls on the Onion River: A History of Winooski,Vermont.
These and other historians do agree — more or less — on the English definition of the Abenaki word. Itsroot means “onion” or “leek,” they all say,noting that the tangy bulb once flourished in wild profusion alongthe river’s banks.
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