Notes on Jefferson's Draft. 41 



question whether they are worse, or much worse, than the 

 names that States have deliberately taken to themselves or 

 received from their European sponsors. Two come legiti- 

 mately enough from the Indian names, Assenisipi and Peli- 

 sipi, of the Rock and Ohio rivers ; and it is not easy to frame a 

 canon of euphony that will reject these and accept Mississippi, 

 Massachusetts, Connecticut and Minnesota. The Grecian 

 or would-be-Grecian aspect of Metropotamia, Polypotamia 

 and Chersonesus need not have offended the sensibilities of 

 a Congress that was accustomed to hold sessions in Annapolis 

 or Philadelphia. Indeed, in the short list of our cities of a 

 hundred thousand inhabitants appear three names, either 

 Greek or of a lamentable Greek admixture — Philadelphia, 

 Minneapolis and Indianapolis, besides other curiosities like 

 Cincinnati, Chicago, Omaha, Milwaukee, Allegheny, Provi- 

 dence and Buffalo. And if the comparison be kept strictly to 

 names of States, the error of Jefferson's list towards Greek is 

 perhaps offset by its superiority in other points; it has no name 

 out of a story-book like California; none so commonplace as 

 New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York ; none so angular 

 as Wisconsin, Arkansas, Massachusetts and Connecticut; none 

 so mongrel as Pennsylvania; none so cumbrous as Rhode- 

 Island-and-Providence-Plantations. 



It may accordingly be urged that the amusement over 

 Jefferson's names comes not from any unusual oddity in them, 

 but from the fact that others have been taken instead. If 

 Assenisipia and Polypotamia had been adopted, they would 

 doubtless pass unnoticed now, like Mississippi and Indian- 

 apolis. 



