How Wausau got its name

Robert Mentzer Updated 9030 a.m. CT Jan. 30, 2015

I have received a letter from Doris Alford Jahnke asking several excellent
questions:

"I grew up in Wausau in the 1930s and 1940s," she writes. "Years ago, I was
told that 'Wausau' is Indian language meaning 'far away.'

"1) Is this true?

"2) If so, what are the meanings for: a) Waupun, b) Wauwatosa, c)

Milwaukee, d) Waukesha?

"I'd love to find out."

I have heard the same thing about the name "Wausau" and have had the
same curiosity about it. The city's own website explains that "This was the
area where the Chippewa Indians went on their yearly hunts and called it
'Wausau,' translated to mean 'far away place.'" That phrase, "far away place,"
has a lovely poetic quality to it — which naturally caused me to wonder if this
origin story might be apocryphal, one of those things that sounds good and
gets passed around but doesn't actually check out.

Nope. It's real. The answer to question 1) is: Yes!

Another name for the Chippewa — another way of pronouncing the same
word, in fact — is Ojibwe. The good people at the Department of American
Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota have created an Ojibwe
People's Dictionary. I got in touch with American Indian Studies professor
John Nichols, an Ojibwe language specialist who works on the dictionary.

"The current Ojibwe spelling is waasaa," Nichols wrote me, meaning "far, far
away, distant."
"It isn't a normal Ojibwe place name," Nichols said. "I have no record of the
actual Ojibwe name."

Aha, I wrote back. So it is actually an Ojibwe word, but was not actually the
Ojibwe name for this place.

Not so fast, Nichols said. "I don't know that it isn't the Ojibwe name for
Wausau. Some English place names based on Ojibwe names are shortened
versions and there are traditional place names that begin with Waasaa, with
meanings not connected with distance. Also a number of towns were given
names using Ojibwe words from the writings of early 19th century author
Henry Schoolcraft that were not Ojibwe place names."

So that bit is and shall remain a mystery. The city's

webpage also references an alternative, a different
language in which "Wausau" means "noise like
thunder." But I could not track down good sources on
that, and also I don't like that phrase as much, so I am
going to choose to believe the former interpretation.

At any rate, we do know with certainty whose idea it

was to enshrine "Wausau" as the actual legal name of
Buy Photo our home.
This letter I received asks
good questions. (Photo: It was Walter McIndoe, a Scottish immigrant with an
Daily Herald Media) impressive beard who became a lumber baron here in
the 1840s. In 1850 he was elected (as a Whig) to the
state Assembly, and in his first term he got a bill passed that changed the
name of our fair city from the decidedly unpoetic "Big Bull Falls" to, yes,
"Wausau."

Nichols pointed me to a 1991 book called "Indian Names on Wisconsin's

Map" by Virgil J. Vogel, one of the sources for the answers to the rest of
Doris Alford Jahnke's questions. It turns out that Wisconsin's many "wau"s
are not linked:

• "Waupun" comes from the Ojibwe word "Waubun," meaning "dawn of day,"
which is nice.

• Wauwatosa comes from the Potawatomi word for "firefly."

• Milwaukee comes from the Algonquin word "Millioke," meaning "good" or

"pleasant land."

• Waukesha just comes from a guy's name, a tribal leader named "Wauk-
tsha."

Vogel also relates this story about Wausau's origin from the 19th century
ethnographer Walter J. Hoffman, who spent 1890 to 1891 with Menominee
tribes in Wisconsin:

"An Ojibwa was at one time walking by a hunter's cabin in the direction of the
place where this town has since been built, and as the hunter asked the
Indian where he was going, he replied 'wâ'sâ, wâ'sâ — far, far,' meaning to a
great distance."

"More probably," opines Vogel, "the place was named for the far-off view
from nearby Rib Mountain .... or simply for its pleasing sound."

Robert Mentzer is regional opinion editor for Gannett Central Wisconsin

Media. Contact: rmentzer@gannett.com, 715-845-0604; on Twitter:
@robertmentzer.