{"id":11588,"date":"2012-09-16T09:12:18","date_gmt":"2012-09-16T14:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=11588"},"modified":"2022-03-17T06:23:45","modified_gmt":"2022-03-17T11:23:45","slug":"captains-less-prestigious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/captains-less-prestigious\/","title":{"rendered":"Captains Less Prestigious"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I had no trouble finding populated places named for Captain James Cook<\/a>, the legendary 18th Century explorer and navigator, along the edges of the waters he sailed. However, plenty of other captains sailed the oceans during that same period. Naturally I wondered if the maps memorialized others similarly. Could I find other places named “Captain X” in honor of those lesser-known mariners?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I consulted online place name databases and gazetteers of four large English-speaking nations. This confirmed that the phenomenon does not extend much beyond Captain Cook. There were a number of interesting exceptions which I will explore momentarily, however, those were few and far between.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s note a handful of caveats. I was looking specifically for inhabited places that started with “Captain.” I’m sure there were plenty of sites that referenced people by surname without their corresponding title. For example the cities of Vancouver in the U.S. state of Washington and in Canada’s province of British Columbia suffer from that fate. Nobody calls them “Captain Vancouver” even though both of them tie back legitimately to Captain George Vancouver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also discarded any obvious hits that did not refer to a specifically-identifiable human. All of those Captain’s Groves, Coves, Rocks, Islands, Hills, Knolls, Quarters and such all went into the trash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally I searched databases of English-speaking countries only. It’s possible a rich legacy of other seafaring nations — Portugal and its progeny come to mind — have spawned Captain place names too. It’s harder for me to find and query those databases because of my limited (nonexistent) foreign language abilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, and all those caveats aside, I found it hard to believe that I could find only one non-Cook populated place in the United States named for an actual captain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

United States<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"I-495<\/a>
The former Cabin John Bridge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My source was the frequently-referenced U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System<\/a>. It referenced Cabin John, Maryland in response to my request (map<\/a>). This is a real place<\/a>. I’ve not only heard of it, I’ve been there so I can vouch that it exists. “Cabin” in this instance is a linguistic modification of Captain, as explained by the community history<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There are several stories about the origin of the name ‘Cabin John’… However, in many old records, as far back as 1715, the creek is referred to as Captain John\u2019s Run or Branch. Thus it would seem that Cabin John is a corrupt spelling of Captain John.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The name isn’t as well known locally today as it was in previous times. Until recently the western bridge of Washington’s famous Beltway (Interstate 495) bore the name Cabin John Bridge. Traffic reporters would repeat the name thousands of times whenever a traffic backed-up occurred, which was a near daily event. That fame or notoriety began dissipating after the name changed to the American Legion Bridge<\/a>. This also created a bit of a litmus test: it’s easy to spot people who have resided in the Washington, DC area for a long time based upon their reference to the bridge (another test — what they call the airport further downstream along the Potomac River).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Cabin John community continues to thrive as a populated place even though it no longer has its eponymous bridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The irony here is that even though this was the only<\/em> populated place in the United States named for an actual captain (other than Cook), nobody really knows definitive the identity of Cabin John. He’s lost to history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Canada<\/h2>\n\n\n\n