Quote:
Originally Posted by Centropolis
feel like Buffalo (fine name) doesn't really suit the city though - a native-derived name seems like a better fit in the vein of Chicago or Milwaukee.
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The city's name was derived from its location along Buffalo Creek (now Buffalo River), but no one is definitively sure why it was originally called that, though there is no lack of opinion going back over 200 years.
The Seneca had called the juncture of the river and Lake Erie "Teyohosereron" or "Das-sho-wa" (Place of the Basswoods), and the French later called it "Rivière aux Chevaux" (River of Horses). However, by the mid 1700s the river and the town became commonly known as Buffalo Creek, as it was referred to in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1784. In the 1804 Holland Land Company survey that defined the city and streets of the city, it was called
New Amsterdam, but the new city name never stuck and the area remained being called Buffalo.
New Amsterdam could have been an appropriate name following the opening of the Erie Canal in the 1820s, as multiple adjoining slips and canals criss-crossed the city in the decades that followed. But by then the city had grown tremendously and there was no going back.
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