Ask Cincinnati has been getting a lot of questions.
Now we need your help with an answer.
If you haven't checked out Ask.Cincinnati.com, here is a little introduction.
We (trending reporter Briana Rice and social media manager Sallee Ann Harrison) run a forum that is open to everyone – including you. People ask questions and others can answer. We also weigh in with helpful information from our newsroom.
The question
On Saturday, Michael Whitehead asked, "Some older people in the area say “Cinsanada” instead of Cincinnati. Curious as to the origin of this usage. Is it ethnic? Geographic?"
I asked around the newsroom and found two answers.
Answers from Enquirer reporters and editors
The first is from Jeff Suess, the Enquirer’s librarian. The Enquirer is one of the few newsrooms left that has a librarian. Suess knows a lot about Cincinnati.
He found an explanation on City Data that sums up what he's heard.
It says that the debate is as old as Cincinnati itself. "Cincinnati was named for the Society of Cincinnatus, an association of Revolutionary War officer veterans, and many members of the Society settled in the area, including John Cleves Symmes. Symmes wrote the name of the city as “Cincinnata”, and pronounced it accordingly, because his understanding was that in the Latin usage, the name should have a feminine gender," was written in the forum.
Mark Wert, the investigations and enterprise editor at the Enquirer, responded to Suess's thoughts. “That’s an interesting tale. But my dad wasn’t from here… and he always called it Cincinnata… I thought it was his hard Midwestern A migrating from an uh…. he wasn’t the only person I knew from NW Ohio who used that pronunciation. I guess they all might have been students of Latin."
Now we want to know what you think
Do you have any idea why some people say "Cincinnada" or "Cincinnata"?
Please email [email protected] or share your thoughts on Ask.Cincinnati.com.
Source link
