Santa Claus and North Pole - both in the United States!
If there's one thing we love to dig deep into for seemingly little reason, it's etymology - the origins of words. We've even dug into it before during Halloween! And as with every year, it feels like the later on it gets the more holidays there are to juggle. To welcome in the seemingly omnipresent holiday season, we wanted to dig into some peculiar sounding city names that tie in just enough with this time of year, and once again underline just how easy it was to pick a name for a new city in the past. Case in point: Garland, TX.
Garland is a normal name, to be honest, so it's not surprising to see it used for a town named. This particular town, with roots dating back to the arrival of immigrants around 1850, was named after the U.S. Attorney General at the time, Augustus Hill Garland.
This got me thinking... Why do we call these styles of holiday wreaths "garland"? Well, a not-as-simple answer: "garland" is etymologically taken from the French word "guirlande" which itself, through several evolutions across languages, likely comes from the Proto-Germanic word "wīraz" which means... wire. Well, garland certainly has that sort of "wirey" feeling, so it makes sense?
Like Garland, Snowflake is the kind of name that is easy to come across yet still makes you stop and go, "Huh." Considering its location in the state of Arizona, one reason why it could be named so is because of its location within the region called the White Mountains. Snowflakes are white, so that makes sense?
The real reason is... rather uneventful, even for a name like Snowflake. The town was founded in 1878 by two people - Apostle Erastus Snow and William Flake. That is it. It's not even named after the ice crystals - it's just two peoples' names combined!
It doesn't get more on the nose when it comes to Christmas than literally naming your town Santa Claus. Perhaps this is where the name Santa Claus originated? The answer is a bit more pedestrian: the city was originally named Santa Fe, but at its establishment there was already a town by that name in Indiana. As a result, they went the route of seeking a new name, and through some unknown path they ended up at Santa Claus.
To surely no surprise, North Pole, Alaska is not anywhere near the geographic North Pole. Rather, its name represents the town's status as a bit of a year-round attraction for folks visiting the nearby city of Fairbanks.
The name was chosen in 1952 as a means of trying to convince toy manufacturers to set up shop there. Over time, other establishments were set up that became thematically named, such as Santa Claus House. So even if the initial hope to draw in toy manufacturers under the guise of having their toys "Made in North Pole" didn't quite succeed, they still were able to flourish into something rather interesting in the grand scheme of Alaska.
Aside from these four examples, you might also find quite a few towns around the United States named Christmas, and the history behind those towns' names is usually that they were founded on Christmas Day, or were adjacent to somewhere that was founded on Christmas Day. Some, like Mistletoe, Kentucky or Noel, Missouri, were named without influence from the holidays, but began to embrace the association.
All this is to hammer home how simple a process it was to name your city in the past - as simple as naming it after what day it was.
Header image sourced with permission from Gabriella Sutanto.
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