What’s In A Name?

A lot more than we thought. Take Fort Bragg. Driven by the pique of social-justice activists, Fort Bragg’s in trouble, because of its name. Philip Zwerling, BA, MFA, PHD—born in New York, here via academia, who retired to Fort Bragg in 2018, appears to be one of the leading spokespersons for a facelift of the Fort Bragg name. Currently he has come up with a contest for Fort Bragg students to change the name of their town. Additionally, In past letters to the editor, Zwerling has stated: “…it seems to me absurd that our town (Fort Bragg) honors a slaver and traitor by bearing his name.” Our town honors? Hold on PHD-in-theater Zwerling, are all the people of Fort Bragg racist because of the name of their town? Do confederate flags fly from city hall?

Braxton Bragg, (who never set foot in Fort Bragg), was a confederate general. He and his wife owned slaves before the Civil War. After the war, bereft of slaves, he sold life insurance, and was an engineer who ran the water works in New Orleans, until during reconstruction, a former slave was given his job. Ole Braxton got what he deserved: old time, affirmative action. On the other hand, General Braxton Bragg was labeled “the most hated man in the confederacy.” Why? For shooting his own men and losing nearly every battle he led. No Bonaparte, Braxton Bragg. 

Did Braxton Bragg contribute to the defeat of the south, which led to the end of slavery? History’s a crafty prostitute that works both sides of the streets. Nonetheless, for a petulant few, especially PHD Zwerling, merely pronouncing the name of Fort Bragg requires washing your mouth out with soap.

In the 70s, there was a coffee shop in Fort Bragg named “Braxton’s. The cappuccinos were great. The general’s picture was up on the wall as some kind of kitschy joke. That was the first time I saw Braxton Bragg’s image and full name, as well as learning about his rebel past, and I’d been around Fort Bragg since I was 5 years old, when Fort Bragg was a working-class town with a roaring lumber mill and significant fishing port. I jigged herring down on the docks. At 7 years of age my father, a commercial fisherman, took my brother and me to sea for the first time to fish for salmon out by the buoy. 

As a teenager, I enjoyed movies at the State Theater on Main, and slurped milkshakes around the corner at the Green Parrot on Laurel Street, where scenes from Racing with Moon were shot. (Sean Penn, Nicolas Cage) My son was born in Fort Bragg, and when I was a commercial fisherman my home port was Fort Bragg. 

At one point in my nautical life, I had to run the Noyo bar in monstrous, breaking seas to arrive safely back in port. I was never so happy in my life to be back in Fort Bragg. 

Fort Bragg has a piece of my heart. I’m not alone in this, but most people born and raised in Fort Bragg, or arrived at some point in their lives, or rest peacefully in Rose Memorial Park, never heard of confederate General Bragg. Fort Bragg was just Fort Bragg, a little town along the coast; not some scandalous appellation paying homage to slavery. That is, until Mr. Zwerling and his pious, PC pals appeared demanding that Fort Bragg signs be chain-sawed from the earth.

Over the years, most residents of Fort Bragg had no knowledge of Braxton Bragg and didn’t care if they did. Amigos: quién es Braxton Bragg? Braxton Bragg was lost to history’s dust until the name-avengers dusted him off. Changing the name of Fort Bragg is an acrimonious pursuit and it’s not fair to the enduring people of Fort Bragg to taint them with a racist brush. Like every small town in America, it’s the people not the name.

If Fort Bragg changed its name to Wokeland, should other names be changed? Towns and cities, or even our own names? The nuisance of political correctness shadows every name. What about the town of Mendocino, or even the county’s name, named for Antoni de Mendoza, the first Spanish Viceroy in the new world? Mendoza was famous, or infamous, for consolidating the conquests of the conquistadors. Dirty work that—enslaving and torturing Indians, stealing their gold and silver, and forcing them into slavery. Braxton Bragg couldn’t hold a candle to them. 

How about Ukiah, our county seat? In the Pomo language, Ukiah means “deep valley.” Did the first settlers ask the Indians if they could use that name? Does the word Ukiah have sacred connotations for the valley’s original inhabitants? Is there a hallowed burial ground where the county court house presently stands? Did anybody check? Did the settlers even care? Cultural appropriation. Mr. Zwerling and his civic vigilantes have certainly heard of that—the inappropriate adoption of the customs, language and ideas of one people by members of a more dominant people. Does Ukiah have to go? Call it Costco if you will. Willits? Willets is a name derived from an old English family surname. The Willet’s motto was: “Dieu et mon devoir!” God and my work! “Work” meant killing in this case. It’s on the Willet’s family crest. “Dieu et mon devoir” was a war cry—the last thing someone heard before they were sliced in two by a broad-sword or clubbed to death with a mace.

Gualala? Pomo for “qh awallali,” meaning “where the water goes down.” Righteous language rustlers, isn’t that cultural appropriation too? Santa Rosa? San Francisco? San Mateo? All named for Catholic saints. Is that fair to Protestants, Hindus, Muslims and Jews? And, what about Boonville in Anderson Valley, obviously named for Daniel Boone? Does Mr. Zwerling and his lexicology vigilantes know that Daniel Boone owned slaves, and—by his own confession—killed 4 Indians? Boonville has to go. Wait: Anderson Valley? Anderson was a sinister, Viking name…poison-mushroom-eating, foaming-at-the-mouth berserkers, who murdered, looted, raped and enslaved people throughout Europe during the Middle Ages. Goodbye Anderson Valley. Wino Valley, in honor of the tasting rooms?

Come to think of it, what about my name: Koepf? In German “Köpf” means head, as in: “Er ist ein heller Köpf.” He’s a bright fellow. I’ll take that. However, “dummköpf” in German means stupid. Yep, time to cancel myself.

Astonishingly, I’ve come across a name that, ostensibly, may be more troubling than mine. Worse than Mendocino; even worse than the name of Fort Bragg. It’s a name that allegedly denigrates an entire sub-section of our populous. Ironically, that name is Zwerling! Zwerling comes from an altered form of German, and in German der Zwerg means— “midget!” The Orwellian Institute of Lexicon Control currently forbids the use of the word “midget.” It’s the M-word now. The M-word is identity-first language. Identity-first language puts a person’s disability before that which a person actually is as a human being. Worse, the suffix, ling, attached to Zwerg implies a diminutive and, often, pejorative form of the preceding word. Zwer-ling, smaller midget? Dwarf? Have we arrived in Lilliputian land? I’m certain that Phillip Zwerling, recently arrived in Fort Bragg, has never, nor would he ever, use any word or words deemed derogatory to m-word little people, or, for that matter, any another group in our population. Nonetheless, nouns and surnames anchor us to the world, whether we seek their origins or not. What’s in a name? Is it best we take a look at ourselves, before we point fingers at the name of somebody’s town?

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Philip Zwerling replies:

I know I shouldn’t overreact to trolls like Michael Koepf, but I have to say I found his piece deeply offensive. 

Now for his multiple misstatements of facts:

When he writes “He [Bragg] and his wife owned slaves before the Civil War.” Braxton Bragg was born into a slave-holding family. It is likely that, like other Southern gentlemen, a slave accompanied Bragg when he went to West Point and a slave waited upon him when he entered the Army as a First Lieutenant. When Bragg left the Army in 1856 he married a wealthy woman in Louisiana and used her money to purchase a large sugar plantation on which he worked 105 enslaved men, women, and children 6 days a week, 18 hours a day at harvest time, to make him one of the richest men in the state. The plantation and the slaves were in his name only as sole owners. Note that the US Army Fort Bragg in California was named for Braxton Bragg in 1857 while he forced other human beings to labor for his wealth. And our town was named Fort Bragg in 1889, 25 years after the Civil War, when everyone knew Bragg had killed an untold number of men in our own Army.

When he writes: “What about Boonville, obviously named for Daniel Boone?” Wrong. That little town was originally named the Corner and later incorporated as Kendall City in 1864. “Soon after W.W.Boone bought the store of Levi and Straus and changed the name of the town to Booneville. The ‘e’  was dropped in the 1880s.”  [see California Place Names by Erwin Gudde, p. 43]. But the evolution of names in Boonville, mirrored in Elk (once Greenwood), Placerville (earlier Dry Diggings and Hangtown) and Springtown [formerly Confederate Crossing] does demonstrate the fluidity of names which change through history. Nothing, not even the name Fort Bragg is Forever.

Now for his hyperbole: 

When he asks “are all the people in our town racists?” No one has ever made such a statement.

When he asks “do Confederate flags fly from city hall?” Why bother to fly a Confederate flag when the entire town is named for a Confederate general?

Now for his occasional truths:

When he writes: “most people born and raised in Fort Bragg, or arrived at some point in their lives, or rest peacefully in Rose Memorial Park, never heard of Confederate General Bragg.” This at first seems merely a gross deficiency in our public schools not teaching local history. How does one not know the history of their own town? But I think more is at work here; people do not know the history because the history was not taught because that history was so shameful it had to be hidden. 

No, I take offense at his name-calling. Koepf returns to the schoolyard of my youth to make fun of the name Zwerling. I didn’t have it as bad as some friends like Bob Schmuck or Mary Gay but German names like Zwerling can be pronounced and mispronounced a’la Sergeant Schultz in Hogan’s Heroes. The one I remember best, or worst was Swirrrrrling. I know “sticks and stones…but names will never hurt me.” But they do, don’t they, Koepf? That’s why you wrote that. Zwerling is an unusual name in America. Its rarity made me uncomfortable and vulnerable as a child. Too many Zwerlings perished in the gas chambers of Auschwitz to make their (my) name a mockery today. 

Koepf, misappropriating Shakespeare, asks “What’s in a name?” reminding us of Juliet when she says to Romeo:

 “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.” 

Most people, like Koepf, stop there. But Juliet continued:

So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,

Retain that dear perfection which he owes

Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name;

And for that name, which is no part of thee,

Take all myself.” [Act II, scene ii]

For love, Juliet is asking Romeo to change his name. For love, she also offers to change her name. For love Fort Bragg should change its name: to make amends to the Indigenous people dispossessed and starved at the concentration camp called a Fort and to Black people traumatized by 400 years of slavery. Not for shame, or fear, or force, but for love.

After all, what’s in a name? 

Philip Zwerling

Fort Bragg

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Michael Koepf replies:

Tying a woke wagon to the Holocaust is…weak, pathetic and beside the point. I wish the old Tip Top was still there so that I could join the bikers, mill worker, loggers, fishermen and those two shot Sallys of old who helped made Fort Bragg the stand-up, working class town it once was, instead of what it has become: day care and assisted leaving for the woke.*
 
*Progressive, Caucasian, over-educated, pseudo Marxists who seek absolute power in America without the will of the majority.