The South Dakota Board on Geographic Names meets Tuesday with its newly clarified statutory power to consider and recommend names for unnamed features. Following Senator Lee Schoenbeck’s 2020 Senate Bill 62, “if a geographic place has not previously been named and the naming of that unnamed geographic place is requested, the South Dakota Board on Geographic Names may conduct public meetings to consider and determine whether to recommend an original name for that geographic place to the United States Board on Geographic Names.”
The Board on Geographic Names will give its formal approval to making a little stream in Hartford the twelfth “Turtle Creek” in South Dakota (because Hartford has turtles, and Turtle is King of the Fish Clan, so I’ve got no problem with that) and a James River tributary a mile north of the Spink County dam “Iron River” (because there are many iron deposits that make the sand red, and former Governor Harvey Wollman supports that name, although the Spink County Historical Society would prefer “Arrowhead” or “Pheasant”).
The board will also take up anew proposal from one Leticia Gilmore, who would like the state to make official her family’s deeming of a small waterway on their property 4.5 miles east of Pierre on Highway 34 “Crone Creek.” The application says the name does not commemorate or honor any individual, so it must refer to the dictionary definition of crone as an unpleasant, withered old woman “Crone Creek is a fantastic name for this water way,” writes Gilmore in her application. “It is an older waterway. It follows that giant pond (see map) but then just trickles in August.”
Just trickles as the year wears on? Maybe the Board on Geographic Names would consider renaming it for any one of our over-60 male legislators….
The Board on Geographic Names convenes Tuesday at 11 a.m. Central in the South Dakota Department of Transportation Commission Room on 700 East Broadway Avenue in Pierre. Limited seating is available, but if you’d prefer to keep your distance from South Dakota’s Executive Branch, you call participate by phone: Inter-Call Dial-In Number: 1-866-410-8397; Conference Code: 2763432247#
All bodies of water in midwestern states should bear the same, accurate name….impaired waters brought to you by wingnut pols and big ag/big awl..
The Big Sioux isn’t too bad until Iowa creeks and rivers join the flow.
Nice one on the “trickles”, Cory.
Total agreement, Mr Barth. See original post.
I’m really surprised that definition of “crone” is still out there, so I had to check several sources and that’s what they all said, though some added the second definition.
Many older women use the term “crone” to self describe, according to the alternate definition- a wise old woman, a sage. That’s the one I hear all the time when I hear women refer to themselves as “crones” with pride.
I’m betting Leticia Gilmore has “wise woman, sage” in mind for “Crone Creek.” I like it. Kudos to Ms. Gilmore!
The negative definition is a symptom of misogyny in language. Male “cronies” has a positive connotation- old pals or buddies in good standing. But when used for the female, “crones” has been twisted- ugly, mean, sorceress.
Interesting, Debbo! I don’t want to stand in the way of a positive definition of crone; the negative definition is simply the one that popped up first when I looked it up.
But here’s an interesting etymological note: crony appears to come from chronos, suggesting the long time cronies have known one another, but crone appears to have “from Anglo-Fr. carogne, from O.N.Fr., term of abuse for a cantankerous or withered woman, lit. “carrion,” from V.L. *caronia.
Language lives; we are not bound by etymology.
Oh, Ms. Geelsdottir, you slay* me, you old crone.
* not in the manner in which some people on this blog wish others to be dead