Scotch Plains lawyer publishes book on New Jersey place names

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The basics:

• Lawyer Scott Salmon publishes “Naming New Jersey” after 4+ years of research
• Book explores origins of 850 towns, neighborhoods and landmarks
• Challenges myths and offers ‘interesting glimpse’ into history
• All book profits donated to Bridge of Books Foundation for literacy

When he’s not navigating the fine print of election rules and municipal law, Scott Salmon spends thousands of hours buried in old maps, town records and other historic documents trying to decode how places in New Jersey got their names.

After more than four years of research, the prominent lawyer recently published a book exploring the etymology of hundreds of towns, neighborhoods and landmarks across the state’s 21 counties.

The Jardim Meisner Salmon Sprague & Susser PC co-managing partner and shareholder describes “Naming New Jersey” as the perfect reference guide – or a fun coffee table book – for anyone who has ever wondered about Connecticut Farms, Moonachie, Orange, Loveladies, Cheesequake or Buttzville.

Available for purchase on Amazon.com, the 86-page book offers insight into the linguistic roots of those names and the cultural influences that have shaped the state’s landscape.  By challenging the official narratives, “Naming New Jersey” aims to provide readers with a deeper understanding of the region’s past and present, said Salmon, chair of his firm’s election group and co-chair of the government representation group.

Organized by county, the book’s entries include:

• Vineland – a prime South Jersey location for growing grapes
• Ironbound – a Newark district bound by railroad tracks
• Freehold – an English legal term for private ownership of land
• Belleville – French for “beautiful town”
• Bargaintown – a neighborhood in Egg Harbor where land was sold cheap when the area failed to quickly develop
• Keyport – an important seaport on Raritan Bay

Salmon, a newly named 2025 NJBIZ Forty Under 40 honoree, said, “New Jersey has one of the richest histories of any state in our country; we were the crossroads of the American Revolution and one of the most diverse places, in terms of people, culture, food and geography, that you’ll ever find. We have a history that we can be proud of, but I think New Jerseyans would appreciate our state more deeply if they know the real stories about how the places we know and love came to exist.”

Inspiration

A passion project of Salmon’s that was more than four years in the making, the book was inspired by a New Jersey Public Library Commission pamphlet from 1945 that offered brief descriptions of the origins of names for 930 spots here.

“The Origin of New Jersey Place Names” was one of many state-by-state guides produced through the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration that offered histories, community descriptions and local lore of how towns got their names.

According to the work’s introduction, research was conducted through state and local histories, recorded folklore, and personal interviews with town officials and “history-minded residents.”

“A good deal of the information submitted was legendary, much of it contradictory; in many instances none was available, even for incorporated municipalities,” the project’s writers noted. They added that they hoped it would “prove useful as source material and will serve to stimulate further research into New Jersey’s background.”

Glimpse into the past

Salmon – who has been described by Micah Rasmussen, executive director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University as “the young Turk of election law” – never set out to challenge the “official history” presented in the pamphlet.

In fact, a friend sent it to him as a fun, light read.

“We had always talked about how towns come up with some of their names … I’ve always been interested in names for as long as I can remember and it’s one of my favorite forms of trivia,” Salmon said.

“I think it’s a super interesting glimpse into what the people who were here originally were like and what was important to them. Some named their new lands after their ancestral homes or the person who led them there. Or after an important person or event happening at the time. Who today has even heard of the War of Jenkins’ Ear? Yet it was apparently important enough at the time to name multiple towns after Admiral Edward Vernon, who fought in it. And was apparently also the inventor of an alcoholic drink called grog,” Salmon said.

“It was fascinating to read about the history of other places throughout New Jersey where I have lived or visited. My fascination soon transitioned to frustration, however, when I realized how much information was either wrong or missing,” he wrote in his book’s foreword.

When he noticed misinformation in the very first entry – Absecon – Salmon started questioning the source. Using the pamphlet’s bibliography, he began tracing back to the original sources to determine what was accurate.

For example, the pamphlet ties Absecon’s name to an “Absegami” tribal word that translates into “little stream.” However, Salmon said his research found that group never existed and the Atlantic City municipality’s name was derived from one of two sources: from the Unami tribe’s word “hapasikàn,” which means “medicinal herb”; or the Algonquian tribe’s word “òpsikhayunk,” which means “place of white salt.”

Salmon believes the latter “makes sense,” especially because Independent Salt Works, a business owned and operated near Absecon Inlet by proprietor and politician Nathaniel Pettit, and it seems “more plausible to name an area after a plentiful local resource.”

Scotch Plains’ origin

He also seeks to debunk the accepted origin of Scotch Plains’ name. In his book, Salmon proposes that the Union County municipality is named for the nationality of its original Scottish settlers who had been in the area since the 1680s.

According to the original pamphlet, the namesake was George Scot, a man who led a group of Scottish immigrants on a voyage to the New World. However, he died during the journey and his countrymen named where they settled in his honor, the work says.

Salmon wrote, “This story seems unlikely. Scot’s ship, the ‘Henry and Francis’ did not arrive until December 1685, a full year after the area was settled. There is also no evidence to suggest that any of the passengers from his ship ever moved to the area either. Scot owned about 500 acres of land in Monmouth County, where his daughter lived, as did some of the immigrants from the ship. Others moved to New York City, and still others moved to New England. Since there were already Scotch immigrants in the area before George Scot even left for the New World, it seems far more likely that the name Scotsplain, and thus, Scotch Plains, is simply derived from the nationality of its original settlers.”

While Salmon regards the pamphlet as “an incredible resource” that “gets far more right than wrong,” its error in the first location listed “damages its credibility.”

“So much of this stuff has come from oral tradition and no one ever actually dug into finding out if that was actually true or not. So, after I found out a bunch of them are wrong, I didn’t like that this is just sort of sitting out there. Anyone can be reading this and they’re thinking this is where the name comes from. But it’s not actually true. And so, over time, I’ve been working on it for about four years to go through all of them,” Salmon said.

In his book’s introduction, Salmon tells readers he seeks to “correct those errors” and add “some new information that I learned in the process.”

“New Jersey has a rich history that we should be proud of, but I think we would appreciate our state more deeply if we knew the truth about how the places we know and love came to exist,” he also said.

On the record

In New Jersey, names of towns, landmarks and geographic areas come from a variety of sources. The most common inspiration came from terms picked up from Native Americans, followed by places in Europe and prominent Americans.

“Up in North Jersey, lots of names are after either Native American words or Dutch words. Or a lot of old English or Middle English words. As well as a lot that were named after whoever settled it,” Salmon explained.

“In South Jersey, there were a lot more named after the topography of what the area looked like. For example, there’s Cabbage Thoroughfare, which is an inlet around Atlantic City. It was called that because the inlet was filled with a lot of sea cabbage and there was a thoroughfare … There’s also a bay down in Atlantic County called Hammock Cove because the shape of the bay looked like a hammock,” he said. “The area has more unique land features, so I think they were more named for those sorts of things.”

Founding fathers

All four Franklin townships in New Jersey are named after founding father Benjamin Franklin. And the six townships called Washington are in tribute to the first American president.

Other dupes include two Hamilton Townships (Atlantic and Mercer counties) that were inspired by Alexander Hamilton. The word “Union” inspired the name of a city in Hudson County, as well as a county and municipality in Central Jersey.

“We have a lot of ‘Unions,’” Salmon said, noting that most were “named after or around the time of the Civil War.”

Author Scott Salmon estimated he looked at “well over a thousand” names but only included about 850 in “Naming New Jersey.”

“I think these with these big events or big people, everyone wants to name where they’re from after that,” Salmon explained. “After what’s called the Mexican-American War, there were suddenly a lot of towns that were founded that were named Buena Vista [a battle in that war] or after the Rio Grande River. These were things clearly in the news at the time … because there was a battle there. And suddenly, they start naming their respective towns after it.”

Salmon estimated that he looked at “well over a thousand” names but only included about 850 in “Naming New Jersey.”

“There were a lot of ones where I couldn’t come up with a satisfactory answer for where it came from. Or there were a lot where it was just an oral tradition and I couldn’t find anything to actually back that up. So, I didn’t include those,” he explained. “Avenel and Belford are two examples. Avenel is supposedly named after the developer’s daughter, but there is a map from decades earlier marking the area as Avenal. Belford is supposedly named after the brother of the first postmaster, but that man did not have a brother. So, they remain a mystery to me.”

Setting it straight

Along with reviewing various guides put together by linguists who speak Munsee and Unami on word origins, Salmon examined sources such property deeds, passenger manifests of ships coming from Europe, old maps and church records to identify possible connections.

“It was definitely a time-intensive project,” he said. “And it was sort of like being a little bit of a detective. It was easy and fun to get lost in all these different explanations, translations and looking up history.

“In my regular job, I do a lot of research, but that’s a very different kind of research. I think that’s probably what made this appealing. It also just becomes a challenge within that of like, ‘I’m going to try and get three more done or four more done.’”

At the same time, the project was challenging, Salmon admitted.

It was definitely a time-intensive project. And it was sort of like being a little bit of a detective. It was easy and fun to get lost in all these different explanations, translations and looking up history.
– Scott Salmon, lawyer and author of ‘Naming New Jersey’

“The most frustrating thing was how many towns have accepted wherever the oral history was. And that made it difficult just because they just accept that this is where the name came from and they put it on their website … It made it a lot harder to figure out what the true answer was because a lot of these places just hadn’t done any research of their own,” he said.

In “Naming New Jersey,” Salmon includes information about the research methods employed in the book. Salmon also tries to address challenges and limitations he encountered during the process.

Challenging ‘official’ histories

“Although I have done my best to research the origin of each name extensively, and I am sure that it is more accurate than the original pamphlet upon which it is based, I cannot guarantee that everything is completely accurate,” he warned his readers. “Too much time has passed. Too many names have become corrupted from their original designations. I have tried to go back to original primary sources where possible, but very few can be traced in that way.”

“Instead, I had to weigh secondary sources for most names and decide which was the most probable story. In multiple instances, I am fully aware that I am challenging the ‘official’ histories offered by a given municipality. I did not take any of them at their word without some type of other source to demonstrate its accuracy,” Salmon explained.

“I should also note the challenges in finding the correct translations for Native American words. Most of these words have multiple spellings, depending on whether the name originally stems from the Unami or Munsee dialects … Different linguists have different translations. The last fluent speaker of the Unami dialect passed away in 2002 and the last fluent Munsee speaker passed away in 2005. Oftentimes, Native American words were spelled incorrectly by colonists on property deeds or corrupted over time. As I am sure you can imagine, this presented significant challenges in determining the most accurate translations,” he said.

However, through careful analysis and consultation with numerous different resources, I am confident that the results presented are as accurate as possible given the available information,” Salmon added.

A native of Scotch Plains, or rather a section of town called Willow Grove that was named after the willow trees that populated the area 200 years ago, Salmon feels the project taught him “a lot about different ways to approach problem-solving when you can’t just attack it head on.”

As an attorney who focuses on land use law, municipal representation and various election-related issues. Salmon believes the experience will enhance his practice.

“I felt like I learned a lot from just looking at all the different neighborhoods and communities within each town … I definitely think I have a lot more insight into the history now,” he said.

You’ve heard his name

The 35-year-old husband and father made headlines in 2024 when he filed a lawsuit seeking to keep Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent campaign for president off the New Jersey ballot.

Salmon earned media attention when he challenged the presidential candidacy of rapper, music producer and fashion designer Ye (formerly Kanye West) in 2020, too. As a result, Ye withdrew his petition.

He was also a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives seat for the 7th District in 2018 but withdrew early and endorsed Tom Malinowski. Salmon then went on to serve as Malinowski’s campaign attorney.

In legal terms

Salmon primarily focuses on municipal law. In addition to serving as town attorney for Berkeley Heights and Teaneck, he provides counsel and litigation services to many governmental entities, including Cranford, Fanwood, Englewood Cliffs, Hillside, Lambertville, Newark, Paterson, Roselle Park and Trenton.

He also advises and represents political campaigns at every level on various election-related issues, such as ballot access and recounts/election contests, and worked with initiative and referendum petition committees as well as recall matters. Salmon has represented multiple municipalities and counties in the decennial re-warding process, too.

Salmon’s work includes advising campaigns, such as Malinowski and U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer, as well as Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop’s gubernatorial run, and organizations on campaign finance rules and regulations.

Some of his most noteworthy cases include:

• Correa v. Grossi (2019) – won a published decision from the Appellate Division that guaranteed bilingual ballots to Hispanic-speaking communities.
• Fuhrman v. Mailander (2021) – successfully sued Ridgewood to get a public question on the ballot that moved local elections from May to November, which significantly increased public participation in those elections.
• South Hunterdon Regional School District (2023) – successfully defended the results of a $33.4 million bond referendum that the voters approved by just a two-vote margin.
• Murphy v. Hohenleitner (2024) – successfully defended the results of an election in Atlantic Highlands, which incumbent Mayor Lori Hohenleitner won by just four votes.

According to Salmon, 100% of profits from “Naming New Jersey” are being donated to Bridge of Books Foundation, an Atlantic Highlands-based nonprofit that works to provide an ongoing source of books to underserved children to support the development of literacy skills.

He also plans to donate copies of his books to local libraries.

Looking ahead, Salmon sees the potential for a follow-up to the book. “I probably could have done 3,000 and I don’t know if I would’ve hit everything in New Jersey,” he said. “I’ve already had a few people that have reached out and say, ‘Well, you didn’t include this one, could you look into this from me?’ And so, if anyone has any requests or ones they’re interested in, I’d love to hear from people.”

According to Salmon, just a few of the locales that people have reached out to him about include Harvey Cedars, Shark River and Hurffville.