Celebrate Louisiana's Bicentennial with Louisiana Places Names

From Aansel to Zwolle, with Mamou in between, researcher Clare D'Artois

Leeper offers an alphabet of Louisiana place names, both past and present. Leeper includes 893

entries that reveal a distinct view of the state's history. Her unique blend of documented fact

and traditional wisdom results in an entertaining guide to Louisiana's place name lore.

Leeper considers the origins of each place as well as each name, drawing attention to the

individuals who transformed Louisiana from an uninhabited wilderness into a populated state.

Not surprising for a region that has existed under ten flags, Louisiana's place names reflect a

mixture of several languages and point to other locales across the country and around the

workh Evenlhe-state's naiTTe,teeperpomts^)ut, combines the French i-wrs^ and the -Spanish——

iana, meaning "belonging to" Louis XIV. Name origins trace back to geography, flora, fauna,

religion, weather, people, and occasionally, a flood, a favorite book, or a popular local dish.

Leeper conducted numerous interviews, visited courthouses, museums, and libraries, and more

recently made use of the Geographic Names Information System to create this fascinating

collection of Louisiana history and folklore.

Clare D'Artois Leeper (1932-2012) wrote the newspaper column "Louisiana Places: Those

Strange Sounding Names" from 1960 to 1979, and again from 2004 to 2006. She received her

degree in library science and owned Legacy Publishing Company. She lived in Baton Rouge,

named for the "red stick" that marked the hunting boundaries of the Bayougoulas and the

Houmas.

October 2012

368 pages, 7 x 10, 1 map

978-0-8071-4738-2

Cloth $39.95, ebook available

Louisiana History