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John Filson came up with the name. Put together L for Licking, "os" from the Latin, meaning "mouth," "anti" is from the Greek, meaning "opposite", and "ville" from the Anglo-Saxon, meaning "city" or "town." So the name parses out to "The Town Opposite the Mouth of the Licking." |
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But one General St. Clair landed in Losantiville on January 2, 1790,
decided he didn't like the name, changed it to Cincinnati, founded Fort
Washington, and moved on to Illinois on January 5th. That's 3 days
he was in town. |
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Judge John Cleves Symmes argued against it, among other reasons because he
thought the form of the word should be "Cincinnata," not "Cincinnati."
But the good judge was better at Latin than at land speculation.
While he was the first man to own what is now virtually all of Hamilton,
Butler, and Warren Counties, he saw the land as suitable for at least
three cities. One at North Bend, one at what is now Cincinnati,
and one near the Columbia/Tusculum area. Or. another way to look
at it: one at the Miami River, one at the Little Miami River, and one at
the Licking. Symmes bet on North Bend, and sold the Cincinnati
track to three men: New Jersey land speculator, and the money man,
Mathias Denman; a prominent man from Lexington to give the enterprise
legitimacy and the fame of his name, Col. Robert Patterson; and one guy
whose role was to do the work of surveying the entire parcel into lots
for future sale, John Filson. If you're counting, that's two guys
from Kentucky and one from New Jersey. |
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Why did it change from Losantiville? Well, D. J. Kenny, in
his Kenny's Illustrated Cincinnati in the late 19th century,
offers that "When the city was founded in its village cradle, a pedantic
schoolmaster was requested to give it a name. He compounded a
barbarous Anglo-Greek derivative, the principal point of which was that
Cincinnati's celebrity, such as it then was, was owing to the fact that
she was opposite the Licking." "Pedantic schoomaster?!?"
Bah! |
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It's noted that while Filson is still commonly known and respected among
historians, Cincinnati's Plum Street was originally named Filson
Street, Filson is the biographer of Daniel Boone that made Boone famous,
and Filson is one of the three founders of Cincinnati, virtually nobody remembers Kenny. St. Clair left
Cincinnati after 3 days, and some time later, Fort Washington shut down and moved to Newport,
where the city was more receptive to it. |
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The more things change... |
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