Contest

Alpena-area bay one step closer to new name

ALPENA -- The federal government on Friday inched closer to bestowing a new name on an Alpena County bay.

The U.S. Department of the Interior announced it had decided on a list of replacement names to pass along for final review as it removes an offensive word from federal maps.

In February, the agency asked the public to suggest new names for 660 geographic features that included a word recently deemed derogatory.

Interested residents submitted at least 40 name suggestions for the bay south of Partridge Point in Alpena Township.

The bay's name included a word considered by many as sexist and racist toward Native American women and now written as "sq___" in Department of the Interior documents.

The task force responsible for collating those suggestions and making final new-name recommendations finished their work last week but did not make their recommendations public.

The Board of Geographic Names plans to vote on the task force's suggestions in September, at which point they will publish their list of new names.

Materials in the Alpena County Library's Alpena History Room connect the Alpena bay's name to two separate stories involving the area's early residents.

One historian suggests the bay was named for a Native American woman startled by a man as she fished on the ice-covered bay around 1850.

In another story, the bay took its name from a Native American woman who wept on the bay's shore after a man she loved was lost in a storm on Thunder Bay.

Librarian Don La Barre said the Department of Interior's edict sparked curiosity in some people who asked him about the name's history, while others were upset by the prospect of a forced change.

About 85 residents offered name suggestions during the public comment period of the renaming process.

Nearly 20 people suggested the name Birdsong Bay, honoring both the woman who wept on the shore in one story of the bay's naming and the profusion of birds often seen in the bay's waters.

Others suggested names tied to nature, to Native American people or traditions, or to the bay's location on the 45th Parallel.

County residents will have to wait until September to learn which suggestion the federal government takes -- or if it assigns the bay a name of its own choosing.

According to regulations.gov, which provides a space for public comment on federal regulations in the making, the Department of the Interior received more than 6,800 comments from across the country on its plan to change names that include the derogatory word.

In April, fewer than 675 comments appeared on the website.

The remaining comments appeared after The News ran -- and shared with the Department of the Interior -- a story reporting on Alpena's vigorous response to the call for name suggestions.

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693 or jriddle@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jriddleX.