Vol. 73 No. 2 (2025): Names: A Journal of Onomastics
Articles

An Enterprise-Naming Inspiration in the United States: The Geographical Panhandle

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  • Michael D. Sublett
Michael D. Sublett
Illinois State University
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5195/names.2025.2790

Published 2025-06-16

Keywords

  • enterprise names,
  • namegiving,
  • ergonyms,
  • place names,
  • panhandles,
  • United States
    • ...More
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Copyright (c) 2025 Michael D. Sublett

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Enterprises, be they businesses, nonprofit organizations, or organized events, need memorable names to differentiate themselves from other enterprises. In the United States, geographical panhandles have provided a distinguishing word around which to build an enterprise name that appeals to people having affection for or a connection to a particular panhandle. This essay seeks to uncover the extent of the panhandle-naming phenomenon, trace panhandle namegiving back through time, and create a corpus of panhandle-named enterprises. Data collection tools involved standard online searches; Google’s predictive searching algorithm; business and nonprofit searching tools on the websites of the states’ secretaries of state; and several subscription databases, including Newspapers.com. Florida’s panhandle has inspired, thus far, more than 2,400 panhandle-named enterprises, with Texas coming in second, at 1,600. Four other states turned up with more than two hundred each: Idaho, West Virginia, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. In total, the research yielded a from-scratch corpus of just over 6,200 panhandle-named enterprises.

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