Alaska History Footnotes: Sumdum Glacier

An irregular series of historical footnotes that were overlooked in your Alaska history class.

 Terry Pratchett, writing in an early novel, The Color of Magic, has fun with place names and the explorers who give them. He relates that on the Discworld, explorers would point to a mountain and demand its name from perplexed locals. According to Pratchett, that’s how you end up with unfortunate place names like Who-Is-This-Fool-Who-Does-Not-Know-a Mountain and the classic, Your-Finger-You-Fool.

There are real life examples of this effect all over Interior Alaska. In Athabascan, the Alaska Native language family in the Interior, “Na” means river. “Tanana” means “Tana River,” for example. So the English Tanana River translates as “Tana River River.”

WC is deeply suspicious of Southeast Alaska’s Sumdum Glacier for exactly these reasons. “What’s that glacier?” “Oh, some dumb glacier.” It’s true that Donald Orth, in his great Dictionary of Alaska Place Names (Amazon link), reports, “Tlingit Indian name reportedly representing the booming sound of icebergs as they break off the glacier.” Sure, Don. And that explains Sumdum Island and Sumdum Mountain? WC thinks Don Orth is having a little fun with his readers.

WC prefers to believe it’s the Pratchett Effect.

About these ads