WHAT PLACE NAMES SAYS ABOUT US

Mark Lane, columnist for the Daytona Beach News-Journal who is better known in the Florida blogosphere for his FlaBlog, has an excellent --- and rather humerous --- piece today dealing with how the names we give to places tend to shift over time and what it says about is.

He refers to the decision to name Flagler County's new high school Matanzas, which is Spanish for "massacre" of "slaughter". The place name is where Spanish Roman Catholics executed nearly 250 French Protestant prisoners in 1565.