Churros y Chocolate   We're enjoying Minneapolis and made a discovery last night, a new restaurant called Solera downtown at Hennepin and 9th, right next to the Orpheum Theater. It serves Spanish tapas, appetizers you make a meal of. We got a reservation at Spanish dinner time, 9:30, and had a great evening. As we were eating I saw a waiter bring churros y chocolate (Photo by Dominik) to another table for dessert. And therein lies a tale.

We have on two occasions stayed up all night to do something at dawn, just because it was a fun thing to do. One was years ago when Les Halles in Paris was still the vegetable market, before the market moved to the suburbs. We did what you were supposed to do, stay up all night and at 4-5 in the morning trudge through the cabbage leaves in Les Halles to go and eat French onion soup.

Some years after that in Madrid we did it again. There you're supposed to go at 4-5 in the morning to any churros stand and eat churros and drink hot chocolate. To understand churros, picture something light and airy like crullers. Picture a machine like the kind that serves frozen yogurt, where you pull the lever and the product comes out in a long rope. The longer you pull, the more comes out. Now picture cruller batter coming out, about an inch thick, and dropping into a deep fat fryer, breaking off in 7-8 inch pieces. Roll them in sugar and you have churros. They go with hot chocolate (and are best at dawn in Madrid if you're a romantic). This was the first time since many years ago in Madrid that we’ve had them. We can’t pass up a cultural experience like this. And Proust talked about madeleines.

Minnesota Trilogy III - A Language Note   So where did Minneapolis get its name? It’s obvious who Saint Paul is named after, but Minneapolis?

The people who named Minneapolis did a poor job of showing just what the city was named after. They hid the facts so thoroughly that even locals don't know where the name came from.

The namers made two mistakes, choice of ending and cutting up the name. Let's talk about endings first.

We use the French -ville (Nashville, Jacksonville), the Germanic -burg(h) (Williamsburg, Pittsburgh), the English -ton/-town (Charleston, Georgetown), the Scandinavian -by (Digby, Darrowby). These all come from contemporary languages.

But during the Neoclassical period in the early 1800's, people delighted in going back to Ancient Greek and using the word for city, polis, as an ending. Now this is a very interesting word, but it has drawbacks, too.

It sometimes appears with an S or S-sound, all in things originally connected with cities, such as metropolis, police, policy. But sometimes the S changes to a T as in metropolitan, politics, politician.

Also, when used as an ending, it's never stressed, but neither does the name at the beginning of the word have its normal stress. Curiously, the connecting vowel is stressed: AcrOpolis, MinneApolis. This peculiarity of stress distracts from the first part, making meaning, or dedication, vaguer.

Places around the Mediterranean originally given Greek names often used polis. In Athens itself on a hill you have the High City, the Acropolis. In Egypt you had the original Sun City, Heliopolis. (Notice the stress change from HElio to HeliOpolis.)

Sometimes polis changed over the years. In Tunisia you had a city with a Greek name that grew from three towns, Threetown, or Tripolis. It shortened to become Tripoli. (Should the Twin Cities be called either Bipolis or Bipoli?)

In Italy the Greeks founded Newtown, Neapolis. In Italian it shortened to Napoli, but in Naples and in the German Neapel you see other variations in shortenings.

In France, the Greeks founded Nice, and across the Baie des Anges they also founded Oppositeville, or Antipolis. In time that changed to the modern Antibes. When you consider that that's pronounced Antib, polis effectively is reduced to a B.

One more in Europe. The Greeks wanted to honor the Emperor Constantine, and founded Constantinopolis, which eventually reduced to Constantinople. Note what happened to polis here.

If you think that the Turkish name Istanbul is a different name from Constantinople, you are mistaken. It is simply the Turkish version of the word Constantinople, which is greatly shortened, dropping three of the five syllables. Drop CON. Drop TIN. Drop the stressed O. You are left with STAN and PLE. Earlier versions of the name were Stanbul or Stamboul. I assume it was easier for the Turks to pronounce with an I at the beginning, so we have Istanbul. But my point: polis appears as bul.

So to the New World. It was a period of wanting to revive an ending from Classical Greek. The people of Indiana were the most successful. Indianapolis might be long, but it has 100% recognition as to who is being honored. Of course you might wonder that they would dedicate both the state name and its capital to the Indians, but you can't say they weren't consistent.

Now move to Maryland's capital. Who's Annapolis named after? If you were asked under pressure, even though you never thought of it before since this dedication is also rather obscure, who’s being honored, you might come up with--Ann? Georgetown is clearly named after King George; Annapolis is obscurely named after Queen Anne. Do you see my point about -(A)polis? The peculiar stress pulls attention away from the name. Most people never thought about Annapolis being named after anyone, either.

(Note: also note the S/T change for the inhabitants: Minneapolitains, Annapolitans, Indianapolitans. These things become unwieldy.)

So now, Minneapolis. And don't come up with a humorous dedication to Minnie Mouse.

I said earlier that the other poor choice the namers of Minneapolis made aside from the choice of an ending was cutting up the name.

If you named a city Lincolnapolis it could be pretty clear who you were talking about, but if you shortened the name before attaching it to the ending so you get Lincapolis it would become much obscurer.

So what about Minneapolis? Let’s start on the Fort Snelling bluffs above the rivers and drive upstream toward Minneapolis about only five minutes. You will come to Minnehaha Park, with the Longfellow House (yes, Longfellow) and the locally very famous Minnehaha Falls (Photo by The Statue with the Dictionary). Minnehaha Creek, flowing through the city with Minnehaha Parkway on both sides goes over Minnehaha Falls and into the Mississippi. A statue of Hiawatha carrying Minnehaha (Photo by Mulad) over Minnehaha Creek is nearby. Minnehaha Avenue (and Hiawatha Avenue) lead to downtown Minneapolis. Do you see a trend?

Walk up to someone at Minnehaha Falls and ask him how Minneapolis got its name and I bet he won't know. It isn't his fault. It is the most obscurely named place I can think of. Poor choice of ending, and then cutting Minnehaha [Falls] in half.

I did read once that they originally tried to keep an H and make it Minnehapolis, but that was of course unpronounceable and disappeared.

Minnehaha-apolis would have been impossible. Without cutting the name in half, what ending would have worked better? Minnehahaville? Minnehahaburg? They both have the same five syllables as Minneapolis. But no.

The best solution would have been to follow the pattern of Houston, Denver, Washington, and yes, Saint Paul: no ending at all. Minnehaha, Minnesota. The twin cities of Minnehaha and Saint Paul. Works for me.

One last thought. The local namers did try for consistency when they originally had Saint Anthony and Saint Paul (and Saint Peter on the Minnesota).

If you want to really cite Longfellow and have a poetic, literary naming to a major urban area, as well as a dedication to Native Americans, why not rename Saint Paul so that you end up with the twin cities of Minnehaha and Hiawatha?