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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." | |
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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." |
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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, 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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