A Namer’s Travels: The Louisiana Wordsmiths
My current home base is Houston, which means New Orleans is a straight shot down I-10 and an easy long weekend. For anyone who loves language, etymologies, and wrestling with new words, a drive through Louisiana is a visual feast. It’s something like a history lesson and an international excursion combined, with more Arby’s.
I’ve been to the Pelican State before, but on this drive I decide to keep track of words and names that grab my attention along the way — one side effect of being a professional namer, I suppose. It’s a good thing I’m not driving, because googling roadside signs is a full time job. We start off easy, though, with some regional wordplay.
📍 Grab-N-Geaux Smokehouse, Lake Charles
For a roadside business in Louisiana, it would be silly to have an “o” in your name and not give it some Cajun flair. Most of them have done exactly that (later on, I’ll see nothing but “Geaux Tigers!” signs near LSU). The suffix -eaux is common in historically Cajun surnames, likely from the plural form of French nouns ending in -eau. The stories of Boudreaux and Thibodeaux are worth a google, but they’re best experienced when recited by a local with a Cajun lilt.
📍 The boudin capital of the world
Scott, LA has earned the moniker of “Boudin capital of the world”, with more purveyors of the spicy sausage per capita than anywhere else in the state — and presumably, beyond. Boudin (boo-dan) comes from the Anglo-Norman word for sausage, not to be confused with the iconic San Francisco sourdough bakery (boo-deen). Sadly, we realize that we’re going to miss Scott’s annual boudin festival by just one week. We duck into a local shop to appreciate their deli case of the local specialty, plus tasso (spicy cured pork) and pistolettes (stuffed & fried bread rolls). Of course there’s the usual array of seasoning mayhem (Swampilicious, StaleKraker Cajun Two Step, Slap Ya Mama).
📍 Bayou Teche
We take a slight detour to revisit a favorite spot of ours: Bayou Teche Brewing. Named after a serpentine river nearby, the entire brewery is an ode to Cajun-French culture and tradition. I taste the Acadie farmhouse ale, a nod to the family’s Acadian heritage in Eastern Canada, but I opt for a pint of the Cocodrie (Cajun-French for alligator), which I can’t stop saying. On a cooler day I might’ve gone for the Loup Garou — a legendary bayou-dwelling werewolf, and an imperial stout.
📍 Atchafalaya Basin
Another insanely satisfying word to say, the Atchafalaya (atch-uh-fuh-lie-uh) Basin is the country’s largest freshwater swamp, where the Atchafalaya River meets the Gulf of Mexico. We cross it via the eponymous bridge spanning 18.2 miles — just long enough to panic about the nonexistent shoulder and distract ourselves with the soothing sounds of Clifton Chenier. From the Choctaw for “long river,” the name couldn’t be more fitting.
📍 Grosse Tete
We don’t stop in Grosse Tete, a village just outside of Baton Rouge, but I see the name on I-10 and my elementary-level French translates this to “Big Head.” Like so many other villages in Cajun country, it shares a name with a nearby bayou. Legend has it that “Big Head” referred to a large-domed resident hunter in the area.
📍 Lake Pontchartrain
As we approach New Orleans, the names are getting longer and so are the bridges (this one is the longest continuous bridge over water in the world at 24 miles). The lake, which is actually an estuary, shares a name with a historic French chateau — likely referring to the site of a bridge (pont) en route to the city of Chartres. This educational tidbit doesn’t help me at all with the local pronunciation, which is something along the lines of pon-shuh-train.
📍 Tchoupitoulas Street
It’s late when we arrive at Tipitina’s, a landmark New Orleans venue at the corner of Napoleon & Tchoupitoulas. The street names are just one example of the intersection — literally — of the city’s many cultures and complex histories. I naturally have to know more about Tchoupitoulas (pronounced chop-ih-too-luss), and I learn that it’s the name of an indigenous tribe, perhaps meaning “those who live at the river” in Choctaw. It also inspired the Wild Tchoupitoulas, a group of Mardi Gras Indians turned recording artists.
At this point I’m exhausted from feasting on new words, factoids, and gumbo. As someone who’s constantly thinking about the origins and pronounceability of names (sometimes indexing too heavily on the latter), it’s refreshing to be someplace where no name is too “challenging” for a major street or business, and language is used to celebrate so many different facets of the local history.
In the coming days I’ll find more names that require an understanding (and then abandonment) of French phonology, plus streets named after Greek Muses, and Creole menu specials that I could never recreate. This namer is satiated until the next fais-do-do.
