Growing up in Buffalo, New York, I was given to understand early on that the city was not named after the animal and that no bison had ever been anywhere near the city until the local zoo acquired a brace of them, The name of the city, I was given to understand, was a corruption of the French beau fleuve, "beautiful river." Presumably some English settlers ran into some French trappers and asked them where they were, and the French thought the question related to the Niagara River and responded accordingly.
You know something? I don't believe a word of it, I don't think a Frenchman would call the place beau fleuve in the first place, and I don't think an English colonist would hear beau fleuve and turn it into Buffalo.
When Buffalo was first settled, there was another town a few miles distant called Black Rock, which Buffalo later grew to absorb. I think Black Rock got its name from the presence of a rock in the neighborhood, and a dark rock at that. And I likewise believe that Buffalo got named after a buffalo. Someone either saw one hanging around, not a far-fetched notion, or thought he saw one, or something that looked like one, or something.
There's a place in Arkansas named Toad Suck. I haven't been there, not yet, and I don't know how it got its name, but don 't expect me to believe that toads didn't have something to do with it. I won't accept that it was named for an itinerant Rhinelander named Taussig or that there was a plague of tussock moths in the area. There's a toad at the bottom of this one. I'm fairly sure of it.
- Lawrence Block, "Hunting Buffalo," pp.161-161 in Hunting Buffalo with Bent Nails
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