Press play to watch the design evolve.

How did you make this map? —Kelly J
Kelly, I'm glad you asked. Our design process begins and ends with research.

In the spring of 2008, one of our editors read that the U.S. Board on Geographical Names had renamed 16 valleys, creeks, and other sites employing the term “squaw” because, as it turns out, many Native Americans consider “the S word” a profane term for female genitalia. Intrigued, we wondered what other placenames really mean.

By July, an eager intern had assembled a few pages of Native American placenames—and what seemed like their translations. But we soon learned that finding an accurate translation isn’t easy. Centuries worth of conflicting theories abound.

So researcher Shelley Sperry spoke with Ives Goddard, senior linguist emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution. He steered us to a book called Native American Placenames of the United States (2004) by the late William Bright, a professor adjoint of linguistics at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

This 600-page tome is the source for indigenous roots of America’s placenames, from Accomac, Virginia, (land across the water) to Zaca, California (quiet place). Bright spent a lifetime collecting and vetting names. He also drew upon the work of 19th-century linguists, who first ventured West to meet tribes and record their languages. “That’s why it’s so much easier to verify placenames in the West,” says Sperry. “When the East was settled in the 1600s, few Europeans—except Jesuit missionaries—studied native languages before disease and warfare took its toll.”

Sperry spent weeks selecting names from all 50 states. Occasionally, Goddard updated Bright’s etymologies with new findings. By September, their list became my typographic puzzle (animation, above). To solve it, I shifted and resized words until their ascenders and descenders (think “b’s” and “y’s”) fit together. In the process, gaps opened in regions where we needed more names. “Shelley!” I’d say. “I need more North Dakota! More Texas too.” She’d go back to the book, Goddard would comment, then I’d rejigger the map. This went on for months.

From concept to completion, the names map took almost a year. To be fair to William Bright, the research took far longer.

—Oliver Uberti

View the interactive map. Read the article.

Comments