950. Nowthen, a town with an odd little name, helps us understand the word "namesake," and then I have some surprising poll results about the much-hated verb "commentate."
950. Nowthen, a town with an odd little name, helps us understand the word "namesake," and then I have some surprising poll results about the much-hated verb "commentate."
The "namesake" segment is written by Brenda Thomas, a freelance writer who enjoys writing about a variety of topics in the humanities and education.
| Transcript.
| Subscribe to the newsletter for regular updates.
| Watch my LinkedIn Learning writing courses.
| HOST: Mignon Fogarty
| VOICEMAIL: 833-214-GIRL (833-214-4475) or https://sayhi.chat/grammargirl
| Grammar Girl is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network.
| Theme music by Catherine Rannus.
| Grammar Girl Social Media Links: YouTube. TikTok. Facebook. Instagram. LinkedIn. Mastodon. Pebble. Bluesky.
by Brenda Thomas
This is a story about how a city got its curious name and what it means to be a namesake. The story begins in the late 1890s and takes place in rural Minnesota. James Hare had become the new postmaster of Burns Township, but he had a problem. He wanted to reactivate the Burns Post Office but was told by the United States Post Office Department that he had to come up with a new name for it. Sometime during the three years the post office had been deactivated, another one had opened up elsewhere in the state using the name Burns. In order to ensure the proper delivery of mail, the Postal Department stipulated that post offices in the same state could not use the same name. Although it was also required that post office names match the name of the city, town, or village where it was located, exceptions were made and this was one of those cases.
Instead of submitting just one suggestion, James Hare sent a list of possible names for the Postal Department to choose from. Two of the names on his list were Haresville and Hare’s Corners, even though making a post office the namesake of its postmaster was a discouraged practice being phased out by the Postal Department. So it should come as no surprise that the Postal Department did not choose either of Hare’s suggested eponymous names.
Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. Stick around because after we talk about a charming town and how it got its name, we're going to talk about the contentious word "commentate."
After submitting his proposed names to the Postal Department, Hare was surprised to receive an approval letter saying the new name of the post office would be Nowthen (the words "now" and "then," but written as one word: "Nowthen"), even though that name wasn’t one that he had suggested. Or was it?
Those who knew James Hare couldn’t help but notice that he frequently used the phrase “now then” in conversation and that he wrote the same way that he spoke. So, you guessed it, somewhere in his letter to the Postal Department he had included his oft-used phrase.
Although there are different versions of how James Hare used “now then” in his letter, there is agreement that he did include the phrase. Various newspapers and books say he had some sort of ending to his letter that read "Now then, enough said" or "Now then, you can select from this list," or something like that — and its location made it appear as though it was one of his suggested names. But it remains a mystery as to why postal officials selected and approved “Nowthen” (again, as one word) over all the other suggested names. At the time, the Postal Department required short or one-word names, so if it looked like Nowthen was one of Hare’s suggested names, then perhaps it was chosen because it was the shortest on the list that didn’t use someone’s name.
As a result of the Nowthen Post Office being established in Burns Township, the immediate area around the building was often informally referred to as Nowthen. In 2008, when residents of Burns Township voted to incorporate as a city, they could have simply kept the name Burns, but they decided to officially be called Nowthen. By that time, the post office no longer existed, but a few businesses, along with a park and a church, were using Nowthen as part of their names.
The name Nowthen continues to intrigue people, and journalists still write about its origin. Such was the case with an article in the "Anoka County Union Herald" in the summer of 2023. The article reported on a ceremony that took place in Lakeview Cemetery in Nowthen to belatedly honor James Hare as the last Civil War veteran from the Union army to die in Anoka County. Of course, the article also mentioned the credit Hare is given for the city’s name, but in so doing erroneously referred to him as the “namesake of Nowthen.”
The only way James Hare could be the namesake of Nowthen is if he had been named after the city, which he obviously was not. A namesake is a person, place, or thing intentionally given the same name as someone, something, or some place. So even if the Postal Department had selected Haresville or Hare’s Corners from his list of suggested names, James Hare would not have been the namesake. The post office would have been the namesake, and Hare would have been the eponym. If that had happened, we'd simply say the post office was "named after" Hare. The namesake is the person, place, or thing that is given the name, and the eponym is the source of the name. ("Eponym" from a Greek word that means "giving one's name to something.") For example, the Eiffel Tower is named after its creator Gustave Eiffel, which makes the tower the namesake and the engineer the eponym. Likewise, some cities (and their post offices) are the namesakes of people, such as is the case with Lincoln, Nebraska; Hamilton, Ohio; and Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.
Although James Hare never intended a post office or city to be called Nowthen, he is rightly credited with the name. However, he is not the namesake. He’s just the guy who, through a quirk of his own speaking and writing habits and a misunderstanding on the part of the federal government, inadvertently gave the name Nowthen to a city in Minnesota with the current population of only 4,500 people sparsely inhabiting 33 square miles of land.
It was reported that James Hare laughed when he received approval to name the post office Nowthen. If he were still alive today, perhaps he would also find it amusing that the city eventually adopted that name and the story behind it is being used on a grammar podcast to talk about what it means to be a namesake.
That segment was by Brenda Thomas, a freelance writer who enjoys writing about a variety of topics in the humanities and education.
by Mignon Fogarty
If you're into sports, entertainment, politics, the news — you encounter commentators all the time. Heck, even the spelling bee has commentators. And that word, "commentator," has been around since the 1400s without much fuss.
The verb "commentate," though — it gets people positively riled up.
Despite the uproar, "commentate" isn't as new as you'd think. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage traces it back to the late 18th century although it really took off around 1990, if you look at a Google Ngram search.
Merriam-Webster also says that although "commentate" is widely disparaged in the United States, they "know of no British denigration of the word" (which actually fits with comments I've seen from British people on my Facebook page: they're surprised we Americans get worked up about it.)
In fact, a surprising Facebook poll I did recently is why I'm talking about it today. I've been running little polls about traditionally troublesome words to see if opinions have changed over time.
The American Heritage Dictionary has results from surveys they did a while ago, and I find it interesting to compare those results to what people think now, although it's certainly not scientific.
In this case, the sentence was "The retired tennis pro commentated on the upcoming match."
That was back in 2004, and 85% of the Usage Panel rejected this use of the word "commentate."
I almost didn't do a survey on it because I thought nearly everyone would say the sentence was wrong based on the complaints I usually hear about the word. It regularly comes up when I do radio interviews as something people really don't like, along with "orientate" and "conversate."
So I was a little surprised when the poll found that only 75% of the people who responded on Facebook said "commentate" is wrong.
So what are those 25% who say it's fine thinking? Well, some of them said you can't use "commenting" to describe what commentators do. They say those former spelling bee champs telling us why the schwa sound makes a word hard to spell are doing more than just making comments. So we need a different word to describe what they're doing, and "commentating" is that word.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage makes the same argument, and I tend to agree. Further, since people have the job title "commentator," it makes logical sense that they would "commentate." This is one of the ways we make new words in English. It's called "backformation." The verb "edit" was actually formed this way from the noun "editor." Editors edit, and commentators commentate.
But what surprised me more than a little was that Garner's Modern English Usage makes the same argument about the two words having different meanings and says that "commentate" as a verb is "Stage 5: fully accepted."
I have never seen Garner be more permissive than the general public, and it uses a 1-5 rating scale that has options such as "Stage 4: virtually universal but opposed on cogent grounds by a few linguistic stalwarts." I would probably place it at his Stage 3: "commonplace even among many well-educated people, but still avoided in careful usage."
It's possible Garner puts "commentate" at Stage 5 because it's used in academia in a way that isn't familiar to me. He mentions "scholarly commentators," and he also calls TV people who use the verb "commentate" grandiose. So he doesn't love it for TV commentators.
So, what should you do given that most of the public hates "commentate," but someone like Bryan Garner says it's completely fine?
Well, consider your audience. Apparently, "commentate" is acceptable in academia, and I suspect most sports fans wouldn't have a problem with it since the industry has so many commentators. British audiences also don't mind.
But if you're writing for a general American audience, especially one that isn't exposed to a lot of commentators, I'd still avoid it.
I don't think it's wrong, and I agree that "comment" and "commentate" mean different things as verbs. And I expect "commentate" will slowly become more accepted over time.
So I kind of hate that I have to tell you not to use it because there's no logical reason we shouldn't be able to use "commentate" the same way we use "edit," but that's the current reality. Unless you want to be on the cutting edge, it's better to avoid words that most people hate.)
Finally, I have a familect story.
"Hi, Grammar Girl. My name is Lori Hatcher. I'm an author and an editor, and I have a familect for you. We used to have a buff-colored cocker spaniel named Polly. Every time we would give her a bath, she would get all springy and bouncy, but the bath would also make her wiggly, and so one day, we gave her a bath, and she bounced and wiggled out into the backyard, and one of my girls said, 'Look, mommy, Polly is all sprigly.' So 'Sprigly' is our familect. It's a combination of 'springy' and 'wiggly.' It's a great way to describe a cocker spaniel puppy after a bath. I appreciate your podcast and look forward to hearing the next one. Thanks for all you do."
Thanks, Lori! I can just picture Polly being all sprigly.
If you want to share the story of your familect, your family dialect, a word your family and only your family uses, call the voicemail line at 83-321-4-GIRL. It’s in the show notes, and be sure to tell me the story behind your familect because that’s always the best part.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to our audio engineer, Nathan Semes; our ad operations specialist, Morgan Christianson; our digital operations specialist, Holly Hutchings; and our marketing associate, Davina Tomlin, who is a huge T. Kingfisher fan.
And I’m Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. That's all. Thanks for listening.