Conococheague

Question

I hope you can answer this question. We can't agree on the correct pronunciation of “Conococheague.” Would you happen to know?

Answer

“Conococheague” is a Delaware Indian phrase referring to a particular creek, the main branch of which begins in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and flows into Maryland. It crosses under the old Chesapeake & Ohio canal aqueduct near Williamsport, Maryland, and then into the Potomac River near Chambersburg. The name Conococheague, by extension, was later also applied to a mountain nearby.

The area drained in the watershed of the creek was the scene of fierce hostilities between the Delaware tribes and the early white settlers to the area that did not cease until a peace treaty was concluded in 1758.

The U.S. Geological Survey’s Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) public database entry for Conococheague Creek, magnanimously gives the following daunting list of variant spellings: Canigotschik, Conecocheague, Conegocheek, Conegocheige, Conegochiegh, Conegoge, Conegogee, Conegogeek, Conigochego, Conigotoschick, Conijachola, Connatachequa, Connogocheague, Conocochego, Cunnaquachegue, Cunnatachegue, Cunnatichegue, and Guneukitschik.

Some people are determined that the word is pronounced with the accent on the last syllable—“Kahn-uh-kuh-JIG.” However, the bulk of the evidence gives pride of place to putting the accent on the second to the last syllable.

The accepted pronunciation, according to AllRefer.com is “KAH-no-KAH-cheek,” with the accent on the penultimate syllable. And, listening to the folks at the Conococheague Institute in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, pronounce it, I heard “KAH-no-KAH-cheeg.”

In 1822, the Moravian missionary, John Gottlieb Heckewelder (1743-1823), widely traveled among the Delaware Indians, sent to the American Philosophical Society a long descriptive list he had compiled of Indian names of geographical features. On his list (p. 373, as published by the American Philosophical Society in 1834) was “Conococheague,” which he then phoneticized as “Guneukìtschik,” with the accent on the penultimate syllable. He offered the translation as “long indeed, very long indeed.”