German Family Names in Kentucky Place Names

Book excerpt: In Kentucky, as elsewhere in the United States, both natural and cultural features of the landscape often bear names that are borrowed family names; approximately half of the specific elements in Kentucky's place names are family names. Most names in such a detailed list as Field's are "little" names, to use the late George R. Stewart's appropriate term: names of minor features, little known beyond neighborhoods, and recorded only on large-scale maps. persons commemorated in such place names were almost all local residents or others associated with the localities at the time when the names were given, but otherwise unknown. Usually they were pioneer settlers, and their identities may be forgotten in their old neighbourhoods unless they have left descendants still living there