Offspring Rivers of The United States

Abstract

Streams are significant landmarks in the landscape, often acquiring their specific names before other surface features. In English, rivers stand at the apex of the stream hierarchy. This study looks at those rivers in the United States that have their headwaters, their origin points, at the places where two other rivers, of names different from the resulting river, end, like the Allegheny and Monongahela ceasing to exist downstream of the place where they unite to form the Ohio. An adapted term, offspring, was necessary to designate this special circumstance of what turned out to be 71 rivers in the United States.

Keywords:

• United States
• place names
• rivers
• offspring

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to Angela Bonnell, Gary Clark, Bill Kemp, John Kostelnick, Megan Maher, Crystal Williams, and two anonymous reviewers for their assistance.