Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 66, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 March 1920 — Town Peculiarly Named. [ARTICLE]

Town Peculiarly Named.

What’s in a name? becomes a matter for consideration in the case of the happy-go-lucky manner of bestowing one practiced by the surveying party about which Captain Reynardson tells in his book on the Mesopotamian campaign. This party came to a village on the Euphrates not marked on the map. so the surveyors hailed a local Arab and asked him : “What la the name of this village?’ “M’adri, the Arab replied, m’adri meaning “I do not know.” But the party unquestioningly accepted it as the name of the village, and M’adri the village is to this day—on the survey map.