I once heard a local radio personality define the first "Wa" as "sacred" and the second "wa" as "place," describing Wawa as a "sacred place." It was a joke, but that's all I ever recalled about the name. I knew that the company's headquarters are in Wawa, Pennsylvania.
I learned that the town was named for the Chippewa Indian word for "wild goose." Wawa was supposedly defined as wild goose in The Song of Hiawatha, the 1855 poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
I also learned that there is a Wawa in Ontario, Canada. The community is known for its 28-foot-tall metal statue of a Canada goose, which was built in 1960.
I live about 15 minutes from Wawa headquarters, and my Dad saw the first Wawa store being built im 1963 and worked across the street from it for 30 years.
ReplyDeleteWawa stores were named for the goose, as you said. But according to Wikipedia, "Wawa" is an Ojibwe word. Wawa's own site says it is Lenape. Either way, it is definitely not Chippewa.
The town of "Wawa" is really in Middletown Township, which is more broadly known as Media, PA.
That being said, Wawa could very well be a sacred place. It is often the only place to find sustenance and gasoline if you're on the road in the tri-state area. And the coffee is legendary!
As a follow-up to the comment above, the Chippewa and Ojibwe are the same tribe. It is the same word pronounced a little differently due to accent.
ReplyDeleteI found the following explanation: Ojibwe and Chippewa are renderings of the same Algonquian word, "puckering," probably referring to their characteristic moccasin style. "Chippewa" is more commonly used in the United States and "Ojibwe" in Canada, but the Ojibwe people themselves use their native word Anishinabe, meaning "original people."