Talk:Smackover, Arkansas

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History

Removed from article:

I do not know how to enter this change, but here goes: In 1951 I took a course "History of the English Language" while a student at the Journalism School of the University of Missouri. The professor was talking about the strange origins of many United States place names. One that he mentioned was Smackover, Arkansas. He said the name came by Americans corrupting speech of the first white men to frequent that place, French trappers and traders who took the French chemin couvert or "covered path" which was the nature of one of the many ages-old Indian trails through the heavily forested areas there.

Source is unknown. 134.253.26.12 (talk) 19:14, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My vote is also with "chemin couvert" which, unlike "sumac couvert", is a grammatical French expression. Even the town's official page^[1] lists "chemin couvert" as a colorful name for a local bayou. Also supporting this view are The Online Encyclopedia of Arkansas^[2] and Arkansas.com^[3]. -- Douglas W. Boone, guest today at 68.113.127.200 (talk) 22:11, 15 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Douglas Boone, someone should edit the article to clarify what the Online Encyclopedia of Arkansas says: << The name Smackover is possibly derived from Chemin Couvert (meaning “covered way”), though later histories attribute the name to an eighteenth-century French description of the north and south central areas of Union and Ouachita counties, dubbed “Sumac Couvert,” meaning “covered with sumac”—a reference to the area’s dense growths of sumac trees. >> My fear in making the edit is that while I am a very stable genius, one of the few blank areas of my knowledge is the origin of Arkansas town names. The current version of the Wikipedia article says, uncited, << In 1686, the French settlers called this area "Sumac Couvert", which translates to "covered in sumac bushes. >> And I hate to remove that specific, but I realized uncited, bit of knowledge about a 1686 reference. Anyone want to take a slug of sumac wine and be bold? --- HighAtop94 (talk) 18:50, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

[1] ttp://www.smackoverar.com/HISTORY.html

[2] ttp://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=1000

[3] ttp://www.arkansas.com/places-to-go/cities-and-towns/city-detail.aspx?city=Smackover

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