Winnacunnet

Winnacunnet is a word derived from one of the Algonquian languages and may mean "beautiful place in the pines".^[1] Other sources suggest a meaning of "place of pines" or "beautiful long place."^[2]

The word has been transliterated in a variety of ways. Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop used the spelling "Winicowettas". A Hampton Union article from circa 1959 mentions "Winnacunnet", "Winnicunnet", "Wenicunnett", "Winnicummet" and "Winicumet" among the variations.^[3]

Today:

• Winnecunnet Pond, also known as Lake Winnecunnet, is a pond in Norton, Massachusetts. See that article for a variety of alternate spellings.^[4]
• Winnacunnet High School is a school in Hampton, New Hampshire (a town originally known as the "Plantation of Winnacunnet").^[5]

References

1. The supposed translation of the name comes from "The Drama of Winnacunnet", a 1938 production. Note however that translations of Native American words from this period are often regarded as fanciful.
2. These translations are also old and dubious.
3. Hampton Union
4. The Sun Chronicle
5. Regarding its usage in New Hampshire, the name was supposedly used by the Algonquians "to designate the river, afterward called Hampton river, flowing into the Atlantic, a few miles north of the Merrimac, and a tract of land in the vicinity of the river, whose limits are not well defined, but which appears to have been extensive enough to embrace the Indian population, accustomed to resort to the river for shell-fish and game, and to make it, for their canoes, a thoroughfare to the ocean.