Naming of place transforms natural features into cultural landscapes that reflect both the particularities of the physical environment and the interests, perspectives, and commemorations of human actors. Throughout the 20th century place-names, or toponym, studies focused on detailing the history of names without much critical analysis of the cultural or social implications of this naming, or how these names reflect a multi-cultural and multi-generational historical tool to understand past landscapes. More recently geographers, historians, and anthropologists are starting to investigate the role of place names in both the passive reflection of historical processes and actors and of the active social implications of toponyms. The Uinta Mountains in northeast Utah are a unique geological and ecological landscape stretching for over 130 miles east/west and rising to over 13,000 feet. Place names lain upon physical features such as water bodies, peaks, meadows, and the built human environment reflect the totality of past human experience in the Uintas. Commemorative place names highlight the presence of fur trappers, explorers, forest rangers, and Native American tribes, with oral histories providing additional ethnic place names not reflected on historic or contemporary maps. It is also important to analyze the omission of certain people or populations, and the reasons for such lack of cultural place names. Naming creates a means of placing personal experience into a palimpsest of history, and turning the vast stretches of rocks, trees, and water into a culturally known and understood place.

• published: 01 Oct 2013
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