What's in a Name?

Chicago. To me it means “freeze your ass off all winter so you can truly enjoy the sunshine when it finally arrives in August.”

Heh, but really.  Chicago came from an Indian word: Checagou. Many times on my tours I make people laugh letting them know Chicago really means “smelly onion.” I feel comfortable enough saying that and having it be the truth, however, the truth is usually more complicated than one sentence. Makes things so difficult sometimes no?

They first found record of the word Chicago (in its various forms) starting with  LaSalle in 1680. He and his cohorts were really the ones to put Chicago on the map…quite literally. In 1680 LaSalle recorded “Checagou” on one of his maps. After LaSalle the word was seen again on a 1684 map of where the two branches of the Chicago River were marked “Cheagoumeman” and a small stream to the Des Plaines River said “R. Checagou.”

It appears that Chicagou was used to name an actual place in 1685. It was to mark a small camp of Marquette’s near the South Branch of the river.  Now, it does seem like some Indians told one of LaSalle’s men that the word “Checagou” stood for the smelly onion that riddled the countryside, however, the name “checagou” had been written by the white man before they were told that by the Indians. One of LaSalle’s men also found through the confusing Indian translations that it was not an onion they were talking about, but a strange garlic that grew nearby.

But the garlic/onion rumor might be just that, as it appeared that “Checagou” meant a lot more than one little section of then Chicago, but a huge corridor where the river ran and that the wild onions didn’t really go that far.

Some linguists argue the word would most likely mean strong or great. That the Indians used this term for the Mississippi river, thunder or loud things, like ”

The "Chi-" of Chicoutimi IS supported by various kinds
of evidence to mean "great". The Chicoutimi River, in Canada, is on 18th
Century maps translated as "great discharge". The "Chi-" of Chicago,
meaning "great," however, is currently universally rejected by
Algonquianists.

It gets confusing. Doesn’t it? If you’d like to do more reading on the subject (it gets very linguistic at times), you can try here and here!