Getting To The Bottom

Linda Burton posting from Charleston, West Virginia – History or habit? How do you correctly say “Kanawha,” the name of the river that runs through Charleston? The surest sign somebody doesn’t know much about your town is when they mispronounce a local landmark. I didn’t want to be rude; I called the Visitors Bureau and asked. “How do you pronounce the name of your river?” (Ka-NA-wah? KAN-a-wah?) “However you want,” was the reply. “I call it Ka-NAW but other people say different.” Intense discussion followed, including a poll of the staff. Ka-NAW? What happened to the “H”? Why two syllables instead of three? What is the origin of the name? The staff unanimously agreed on “Ka-NAW” as the preferred term, and told me it was originally an Indian name – Ka-na-wa-ha. Or something like that. One thing was settled for me; I’m going to call it Ka-NAW, as is the habit of current residents. Next I wanted to get to the bottom of the history of the name. I talked to the reference desk at the downtown library; I consulted the West Virginia Encyclopedia online; I read Wikipedia. Wikipedia had this to say, with a list of impressive references: Ka(ih)nawha” derives from the region’s Iroquoian dialects meaning “water way” or “canoe way” implying the metaphor “transport way,” in the local language. The Glottal consonant of the “ih” dropped out as few European settlers and homesteaders were fluent with any of the dialects of Iroquois. Bill Wintz, a descendant of Kanawha Valley pioneers and the West Virginia Historical Society’s 1994 Historian of the Year, wrote in the West Virginia Encyclopedia that “the river was variously called the Conoy, Conoise, Cohnawa, and finally the Kanawha.” TMI; I decided to turn my attention instead to basic facts. » read more