45-letter lake name is example of G whiz

WEBSTER, Mass. - Its blue waters and sparkling shoreline have attracted vacationers for generations, but the sheer length of its name has put Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg on the map.

The Indian name is so long that it encircles window decals and firetruck doors and requires three wide traffic lanes to spell out at the entrance to the town beach and boat ramp.

"We're big on T-shirts and bumper stickers," retired reporter Ed Patenaude says.

Hundreds of tourists come to this central Massachusetts town of about 1,500 just to pose next to the signs.

And the name - spelled various ways since the 1600s - has inspired poems, songs and tall tales.

The official town version has 45 letters (though one town sign painter got carried away and added a few). That makes it the longest lake name in the United States and one of the world's longest place names, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Ethel Merman and Ray Bolger paid homage to it in a song with a tom-tom beat in the 1920s. And calls come in to Town Hall from all over the world, demanding to know if it really exists and how to spell it.

When the state Legislature tried to eliminate a few of the double g's in 1949, outraged residents squelched the scheme.

The uproar prompted a Webster poet to write: "Should lofty redwoods not grow taller? Lo, as I live, the g-full name shall never grow the smaller."

Tongue-tied tourists and printers of small maps can opt for its colorless alias: "Lake Webster."

It's not hard to pronounce when broken down into syllables. The accents come before each slash: Char-gogg/a-gogg/man-chaugg/a-gogg/chau-bun/a-gun/ga-maugg.

The name means "the fishing place at the boundaries and neutral meeting grounds," according to Wise Owl, chief of the Chaubunagungamaug band of Nipmucks, the first to fish here.

The Nipmucks and their neighbors, the Narragansetts, Pequots and Mohegans, gathered at the 1,300-acre lake, still known for its bass, trout and pike fishing.

But that's not the only story.

In the 1920s, when he was a reporter paid by the word at the Webster Times, Lawrence Daly - with more imagination than facts - printed a version that has become better known than the real story.

In Daly's tale, the name arose from a summit meeting of two tribes living at opposite ends of the lake.

"They named this beautiful lake after the terms of that treaty," he wrote. "Chargoggagogg, `You fish on your side,' Manchauggagogg, `I fish on my side,' and Chaubunagungamaugg, `Nobody fish in the middle.' "

Daly, who later became editor of the Webster Times, tried for more than 20 years to debunk his "fanciful tale."

"But nothing he did made any difference," Patenaude said. "It was completely beyond his control."

It's now a place of water skiers, dock parties and - in the winter - ice-boat races.

Still, in the sleepy rhythm of a summer's day, visitors sometimes hear an old recording of Merman and Bolger crooning:

"Oh, we took a walk one evening and we sat down on a log,

by Lake Char-gogg-a-gogg-man-chaugg-a-gogg-chau-bun-a-gun-ga-maugg.

There we told love's old sweet story and we listened to a frog,

in Lake Char-gogg-a-gogg-man-chaugg-a-gogg-chau-bun-a-gun-ga-maugg."