Bibliofuture Author Spotlight featured George R. Stewart a few weeks ago. There is now a piece on NPR about his book Names on the Land.
Excerpt: Names on the Land is a tribute to the American imagination, and we can hope it will inspire some young historian to pick up from there — to explain definitively how Manhattan got its TriBeCa and to explore the psychology that led suburban subdivisions to name their leafy cul-de-sacs after extinct Indian tribes. And I hereby move that we take up Stewart on his concluding idea to organize an “Association for the Preservation of Historic Names.” Will the residents of Gene Autry, Okla., second the notion?
SoWeFo, NoWeMi
in order to create the same bohemian style as TriBeCa (the triangle below canal st.) and SoHo (south of houston st.), I once proposed that a couple of cities in the Miami area be renamed SoWeFo (southwest of ft. lauderdale) and NoWeMi (northwest of miami). it never caught on.