Date: Fri, 18 Nov 1994 15:52:00 PST
From: Ellen Fennell EMF[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSMAIL.WINROCK.ORG
Subject: Re: Suwanee
I wonder about the name "Sewanee" aka University of the South located on
the Cumberland Plateau in east Tennessee. Same origin?
Ellen Fennell
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From: ADS-L
To: Multiple recipients of list ADS-L
Subject: Suwanee
Date: Friday, November 18, 1994 12:23PM
Back to this again ...
Our library just got a copy of Joseph E. Holloway's _The African
Heritage of American English (Indiana U. P., 1993). _Suwanee_ is
listed under both Georgia and Florida place names as possibly of
African origin. On page 115-116 they suggest that it could have come
from Bantu _nsub-wanyi_ 'my house'. Apparently there was a large
Black Seminole settlement near the mouth of the Suwanee until 1818,
when it was destroyed during the Seminole Wars.
There's also a town named Suwanee in Georgia, a little northeast of
Atlanta, but there's no explanation in the book of how the name got
that far north.
David Johns
Waycross College
Waycross, GA