Counties: Webster, Wright, Christian, Douglas, Ozark, Taney, Stone, Barry, and McDonald||"If, by chance, all the written evidence of the history of a region, the character of its people, its economic structure, and its physical qualities were swept away, the story of that region could be reconstructed with an astounding degree of accuracy, from the place-names of the section alone. The place-names of these counties of the Ozarks remarkably mirror its early history, its people, and their interests and tastes. To enable the reader to grasp the subject more easily and trace its course more methodically, a table of classification has been presented and discussed in the first chapter. All the names have been grouped under five heads: 1) Borrowed Names, 2) Historical Names, 3) Personal Names, 4) Environmental Names, and 5) Subjective Names. These five heads will cover practically all the place-names found in any locality, except for the unsolved and doubtful ones. These unsolved names have been listed at the end of Chapter One for the benefit of future investigators and students. Besides these five groups of classification there remain five additional ways in which almost all the names will repay study. They are: 1) The Composition of Names, 2) The Linguistic Features, such as spelling, pronunciation, and dialect words, 3) Non-English Names, 4) and 6) Folkways and Folklore. Chapter Two comprises a brief survey and discussion of the names with regard to these five special features. Chapter Three, embracing by far the greater part of the thesis in bulk, consists of a dictionary of all the place-names studied. In an Appendix I have discussed separately the school names of the section. Last of all I have placed my Bibliography."--Pages 18-19.||"This thesis is the record of careful research into the origin of the place-names of the lower southwest counties of Missouri. Nine counties, Webster, Wright, Christian, Douglas, Ozark, Taney, Stone, Barry, and McDonald have been studied, and the origin of place-names of counties, towns, post offices, streams, "hollows", hills, springs, "knobs", rivers, prairies, townships, mountains, valleys, ridges, gaps, and "balds" have been recorded, in so far as it was possible. These nine counties constitute a large part of what is known as the Ozark Region. It is only in the last few decades that the possibilities and the resources of this region have been fully realized. However, it is in the early history of this section that the romance of pioneer settlement and the character and qualities of these people are most clearly seen."--Page 1.
Crouching Beliefs, Hidden Biases