What's In a Name?

There’s a wonderful blog post by Penny L. Richards over at the Temple University Disability Studies site that’s devoted to the names of towns or counties that are directly related to people with disabilities. See what she has to say about Erastus Deaf Smith.

Of course it comes   as no surprise that there are places named “Idiot-ville” or “Idiot Creek” for in the 19th century the word was in such frequent usage that its hard to deliver it entire in our contemporary  age. Idiot meant feeble minded, simpleton, “dumb” –and in turn it was seldom an accurate description of real human beings though it was a terrific tool or prosthesis for social control.

Real human beings were labeled idiots because they were deaf or blind or had developmental disabilities and in migratory and impoverished America no one had a clue how to educate or communicate with people with disabilities and a good solid word covered a multitude of social problems just like a certain scarlet letter made famous by Hawthorn. Which gets me to my point of course: the pejorative appellations that haunt American fancy are largely Puritan in nature.

The evolution of the word “idiot” is tied directly to the history of literacy for its not until the advent of the printing press and the development of rudimentary public education in Europe that the word is transformed from its original Latin meaning idiota “ordinary person, layman,”  to something more sinister.

By the time of the Puritan migration to America the word meant uneducable and in turn it could be used with great effect to excoriate a child who proved resistant to his or her education. A scarlet letter indeed.

Idiot-ville is where you were sent if you didn’t do your homework. And if for some reason you were unable to do your homework you were also sent there.

Nowadays of course we would call such places “Retard-ville or “Special-Education-ville” for we haven’t yet outgrown the Puritan notion that we can send people elsewhere and give them a   scarlet token in the bargain.

Me? I live in Can’t See Shit-ville” and you can put it in your GPS.

 

S.K.