William A. Read's Louisiana place names of Indian origin: A collection of words was originally published in 1927. A brief introduction by George M. Riser, a member of the Louisiana Antiquities Commission and president of the Louisiana Archaeological Society, provides useful biographical, institutional, and bibliographical information that complements Read's preface and introduction. Read drew on many sources to analyze the phonology, history, and social context of Indian place names in Louisiana, including migration legends, Indian grammars, colonial and 19th-century explorers' reports, railroad maps, newspapers, the Public Lands American State Papers from the 1830s, the Commercial Review of the South and West (1840s to 1870), Bureau of American Ethnology reports from the 1880s, and accounts from informants including State Land Office, Public Service Commission, and Agriculture and Immigration officials, along with stories from friends and local individuals.
The Indian-origin place words generally come from Choctaw's Longtown dialect, which has few consonants and many vowels. Other Indian source dialects are Caddo, Mobilian (chiefly based on Choctaw and, in its communicating among tribes of the Gulf states, influential in Choctaw's influence on French), Chickasaw, Siouan, Muskhogean, Tunican, Chitimachan, and Atakȧpa. Although Read's etymologies are specific, his analysis includes indeterminacies. “The etymology of Chapitoulas or Tchoupitoulas is obscure, because nobody knows to what dialect the name belongs,” Read acknowledges. “If it is of Choctaw origin, then it may perhaps be analyzed as a compound of hȧcha, ‘river,’ pit, ‘at,’ and itula, itola, or itonla, ‘reside,’—literally, ‘those who live at the river’” (63). “In Algonquian, rekau means ‘sand,' and ‘haki' means ‘place,'” he notes in his analysis of Ricohoc (58–59). Read includes generalizations beyond Indian dialects and Louisiana French, stating, “The substitution of a known for an unknown element, as Albany for bani, is common in the evolution of place names” (44) in explaining Natalbany (a river), noting Choctaw nita, ‘bear' (ursus) and Choctaw foni, ‘bone' and bano, ‘bony,' ‘full of bones,’ possibly ‘Lone Bear,' along with Choctaw abani, ‘a curer’ from abani, ‘to barbecue.'
