A rose by any other name, the poet says would smell as
sweet. However, we should never forget that naming is essential. No one
appreciates this more than journalists and philosophers who are in the business
of correctly naming people, things and ideas.
The name “Connecticuter” (pronounced Connetta-cutter) has
cropped up recently as a possible name for people who live in Connecticut.
The name Connecticut itself, like other native-American
place names, presents unique difficulties because they are tongue twisters. The
tongue trips over Quinnipiac College; some talking heads invariably
mispronounce it. Connecticut the place
was named with reference to the river that flows through it, called by
native-Americans Quinnehtukqut, which means "beside the long tidal
river."
People who live in Connecticut have at various times been
called nutmeggers and Connecticuters. Research
director for the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute Natalie Jackson
found this locution while searching through the U.S. Government Publishing Office Style Manual. The U.S.
Government Printing Office conferred that title on Connecticut in 1945, and the
Merriam-Webster Dictionary lists the definition of ‘Connecticuter’ as “a native
or resident of the state of Connecticut.”
The chief objection to this designation, a sour-tongued cynic
might say, is that the name might have been proper in 1945, but presently the
state is knee-deep in debt to the tune of $60 something billion, and
progressives in the state’s General Assembly are loathed to balance their
accounts by cutting labor costs; therefore, any nickname that hints at cutting
-- Connetta-cutter – would be highly misleading, however politically
useful.
Connecticut State historian Walt Woodward has put the state
on the psychiatrist’s couch and suggested that nutmeggers may have some
difficulty naming themselves because of a longstanding identity and status problem:
“For people who love Connecticut, and there are a lot of people who feel an
intense connection to the state, they still have trouble coming up with — what
is it that we love about Connecticut? What is our unique identity? Even though
Connecticut has a definite identity and it is instinctively clear to people, it
is hard for them to define. All that angst about identity sometimes gets
focused on what we call ourselves.”
U.S. Senator Chris Murphy has promised to have a chat with
Courant writers about this perplexing issue. One can only hope he will not
propose a bill in the Senate formally nicknaming the nutmeg state. That would
only plunge in statutory cement the state’s angst, and most of us would
still be wondering who we are. Actually, Connecticut had in the past defined
itself rather modestly with respect to its contiguous states. We were less
showy than Massachusetts, a haven from the angst ridden lifestyle of the
average New Yorker, and we were comfortable with our non-notoriety, provided we
could hang on to our wealth and dignity.
Our sour cynic above might suggest “Conner’” as an
appropriate nickname. Indeed, that is what the “nutmegger” designation initially
suggested. In the good old colonial days, nutmegger vendors from Connecticut
were known to spike their loads of nutmeg with wooden nuts cunningly fashioned
in the form of nutmegs, a well known and underappreciated con. Those folk from
Connecticut, traders thought, were too clever by half. So long as the people of
Connecticut were clever, the name stuck. It has long since gone out of fashion,
as have other Connecticut designations: “the constitution state” and “the
provision state”, so called because Connecticut was a provider of military
wares to the fledgling government of the revolutionary republic.
Connecticut’s identity crisis, it should be noted, is of
recent vintage. We have during the last three decades shed our historical identity
as prudent and watchful guardians of the public purse. We have leveled the
political playing field between Connecticut and contiguous states, New York and
Massachusetts, by instituting an income tax, thus negating our political
advantage as a tax haven and cost-conscious spender in New England. And we have
lost a good deal of our bad-boy cleverness, except in the anarchical-sections
of our cultural political barracks, where disruptive innovation is encouraged.
Public school kindergarteners in once Puritan Connecticut may now enjoy in
their classrooms the company of cross-dressing males. Pretty much all business
activity in the state is encumbered with regulations and taxation, and we
continue to pester with crippling and punishing regulations women’s health
centers that will not allow abortionists to cross their lintels.
On the other hand, there are some enduring positives. We are
still a small state, relatively speaking, and no politician can through
legislation alter the state’s geographical location between Boston and New
York. Despite the Connecticut’s rapid political change, we may still depend
upon the four seasons visiting us at their appointed times. Even though all’s
not right in the world, God is still in his Heaven and, as Otto von Bismarck
used to say, “God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United
States of America.” Despite the reductionism of modern times, the state's motto
still is "Qui Transtulit Sustinet" -- He Who Transplanted Still
Sustains.
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