Ellensburg

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A city in the central part of Washington State in the northwestern United States, best known as the home of a major public university
2. A small city located in south central Washington State in the American Pacific Northwest, known for its college campus and surrounding farmland
3. The name of a city in Kittitas County, Washington, in the northwestern United States, situated in the Yakima Valley region

Etymology: Ellensburg is a city in central Washington State, and its name is a straightforward piece of American place-naming: it honours Ellen Shoudy, the wife of Hiram Shoudy, who was one of the early settlers of the area. Her name was given to the town when it was platted in the 1870s, and the form "Ellensburg" simply combines her first name with the English word "burg," meaning town. The same pattern appears in many American towns named after a founder's wife or daughter. The word's story is therefore the story of the Shoudys' settlement in the Kittitas Valley. Hiram Shoudy had established a flour mill and a settlement there, and the town grew up around that early enterprise. Because the name derives from a person rather than a landscape feature or an Indigenous term, the word's meaning has stayed fixed on the individual who was commemorated, not on any descriptive sense.