indicate the level to which a name has been verified.
Type Body of Water & River
Usage Ojibwe (Americanized, ?)
Meaning & History
There is no one consensus on the meaning of this name.
One commonly suggested meaning is "blueberry marsh" from the Menominee word menan meaning "blueberries", but tahqua doesn't mean marsh in any language of the region. Another commonly suggested meaning is "dark-colored waters", though no vocabulary of the region supports this claim either. A spelling variation on a 1703 map by Guillaume DeLisle as Outakwamenon has given rise to the conjecture that outakwa comes from outaouac, another name for the Ottawas, and menon is a variation of Ojibwe minong, meaning "good land" or "good place". Another suggested meaning is "shortcut", with this name possibly coming from how the Tahquamenon Bay was used as a shortcut by the Ojibwe, where taqua is a variant spelling of dakwaa, meaning "short" in Ojibwe, and menon being related to the suffix -mon meaning "road" or "trail". It has been suggested in 1930 by Father William Gagnieur, a priest of the Michigan Jesuits who spent significant time with the indigenous tribes of Michigan studying their languages, that the original meaning has been lost to time.
In current day, this is the name of several bodies of water in Michigan including most notably the Tahquamenon River, home of the Tahquamenon falls, which are the largest waterfalls in Michigan and also notorious for their naturally-occurring golden brown waters.
One commonly suggested meaning is "blueberry marsh" from the Menominee word menan meaning "blueberries", but tahqua doesn't mean marsh in any language of the region. Another commonly suggested meaning is "dark-colored waters", though no vocabulary of the region supports this claim either. A spelling variation on a 1703 map by Guillaume DeLisle as Outakwamenon has given rise to the conjecture that outakwa comes from outaouac, another name for the Ottawas, and menon is a variation of Ojibwe minong, meaning "good land" or "good place". Another suggested meaning is "shortcut", with this name possibly coming from how the Tahquamenon Bay was used as a shortcut by the Ojibwe, where taqua is a variant spelling of dakwaa, meaning "short" in Ojibwe, and menon being related to the suffix -mon meaning "road" or "trail". It has been suggested in 1930 by Father William Gagnieur, a priest of the Michigan Jesuits who spent significant time with the indigenous tribes of Michigan studying their languages, that the original meaning has been lost to time.
In current day, this is the name of several bodies of water in Michigan including most notably the Tahquamenon River, home of the Tahquamenon falls, which are the largest waterfalls in Michigan and also notorious for their naturally-occurring golden brown waters.