Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg

[Kaotic Lazagna]

No, I did not make that name up. LMAO

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/odd_very_long_name

[SailDesign]

Originally Posted by Kaotic Lazagna

No, I did not make that name up. LMAO

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/odd_very_long_name

THat's not too far north of here - I have actually been in a boat on the lake (not fishing, coz "nobody fish in the middle")

[marcus]

this is great too know..thanks.

[Kaotic Lazagna]

Originally Posted by SailDesign

THat's not too far north of here - I have actually been in a boat on the lake (not fishing, coz "nobody fish in the middle")

So that's really true? No one really fishes in the middle?

[SailDesign]

Originally Posted by Kaotic Lazagna

So that's really true? No one really fishes in the middle?

Nope, not true. The lake is a good fishing lake, from what I hear. I just didn't happen to BE fishing at the time. Here's an articel that clears up some of the silliness surrounding it:

Lake Name Knee-Deep in Letters
Trudy Truman (AP)

It's blue waters and sparkling shoreline have been attracting vacationers for generations, but it's the sheer length of its name that has put Lake Chargoggagoggmanchaugagoggchaubunagungamaugg on the map.

The American Indian name is so long that its decals completely cover windows and fire truck doors, and three wide traffic lanes are needed to spell out the name at the entrance to the town beach and boat ramp.

"We're big on T-shirts and bumper stickers," said retired reporter Ed Patenaude.

Hundreds of tourists come to the Central Massachusetts town of about 1,500 just to pose next to the signs. And the name, spelled various ways since the 1600's, has inspired poems, songs and tall tales.

The official town version has 45 letters (though one town sign painter got carried away and added a few). That makes it the longest lake name in the United States and one of the world's longest place names, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Ethel Merman and Ray Bolger paid homage to it in a song with a tom-tom beat in the 1920's. And calls come in to Town Hall from around the world, demanding to know if it really exists and how to spell it.

When the state Legislature tried to eliminate a few of the double g's in 1949, outraged residents squelched the scheme. The uproar prompted a Webster poet to write: "Should lofty redwoods not grow taller? Lo, as I live, the g-full name shall never grow the smaller."

Tongue-tied tourists and printers of small maps often opt for its colorless alias: "Lake Webster."

It's not hard to pronounce when broken down into syllables. The accents come before each slash: Char-gogg/a-gogg/man-chaugg/a-gogg/chau-bun/a-gun/ga-maugg.

The name means "the fishing place at the boundaries and neutral meeting grounds," said Wise Owl, chief of the Chaubunagungamaug band of Nipmucks, who were the first to fish

here. The Nipmucks and their neighbors, the Narragansetts, Pequots and Mohegans, all gathered at the 1,300-acre lake, still known for its bass, trout, and pike fishing.

But that’s not the only story.

In the 1920’s, when he was still a reporter being paid by the word at the Webster Times, Lawrence Daly, with more imagination than facts, printed a version that has become a better known than real story.

In Daly’s tale, the name arose from the summit meeting of two tribes living at opposite ends of the lake.

“They named this beautiful lake after the terms of that treaty,” he wrote. “Chargoggagogg, ‘You fish on your side,’ Manchauggagogg, ‘I fish on my side,’ and Chaubunagungamaugg, ‘Nobody fish in the middle.’”

Daly, who later became editor of the Webster Times, tried for more than 20 years to debunk his “fanciful tale”.

“But nothing he did made any difference,” Patenaude said. “It was completely beyond his control.”

Most of the summer camps that ringed the lake during its heyday as a resort in the 1920s and ‘30s have been replaced with year-round homes. The trolley is gone. And an old dance hall is now a condominium complex.

It’s now a place of water skiers, dock parties and, in the winter, ice boat races.

Still, the sleepy rhythm of a summer’s day, visitors can sometimes hear an old recording of Merman and Bolger crooning:

“Oh, we took a walk one evening and we sat down on a log, by Lake Char-gogg-a-gogg-man-chaugg-a-gogg-chau-bun-a-gun-ga-maugg. There, we told loves old sweet story and we listened to a frog, In Lake Char-gogg-a-gogg-man-chaugg-a-gogg-chau-bun-a-gun-ga-maugg.”