Naming Arkansas is visiting the Pryor Center this week. Listeners of Little Rock Public Radio may recognize the recurring spot on 89.1, and soon Northwest Arkansas residents will have the opportunity to hear Dan Boice in person Thursday night for the first Pryor Center Presents program of 2026, called Place Names: Heritage, Hope, and Happenstance.
Dan’s short radio soundbites focus on a place in the state and explain how it got its name. Dan is the director of the library at the University of Arkansas at Monticello and told Ozarks at Large’s Jack Travis ahead of Thursday’s talk that he has always had an interest in Arkansas place names.
Dan Boice: And that just kind of turned into a large-scale project that eventually ended up becoming a book. And based on what I’ve gathered for the book and my other research, I’ve put together a number of one-minute spots. I guess you’d call them just stories about names around the state and things I’ve learned, and some sometimes funny. I guess I’ve got about 60 of them put together now, but I’ve recorded them over the last couple of years. I go in and do 15 or 20 at a time. And the folks there have been gracious about recording and trying to edit out my mistakes, and it’s been a lot of fun.
I enjoy talking, of course, and I’ve found some really good stories, but the fun for me, the best part, is the responses. I get emails or phone calls when people want to correct me on the pronunciation of a town name or a particular fact.
And the most egregious one is I was talking about knives and cutlery, and I said that Arkansas is the home of the Arkansas toothpick, which is another name for the Bowie knife, and got a number of responses — very gracious people — assuring me that no, no, no, the Bowie knife has one edge, the Arkansas toothpick has two.
One of my colleagues at work, who has a knife collection, showed me examples of it. But that’s been the fun, hearing from folks who say, what about my town? Have you ever heard of Bumblebee? And learning about things that way. That’s been a real joy.
Travis: And a collection of your spots, Naming Arkansas, is available online at Little Rock Public Radio’s website. It’s quality radio. I encourage our listeners who are not in Little Rock right now to go check that out.
But, Dan, you will be in Northwest Arkansas in the next couple of days. Can you tell us what you’ll be doing at the Pryor Center?
Boice: I hope in my time at the Pryor Center to just talk a little bit about what I’ve learned about the history of place names in general and how places get named, and then focus on Arkansas and some of the ways Arkansans have named their towns and places over the centuries.
And then focusing a little bit more on Washington County and Northwest Arkansas and some of the names and places there, and how some of those places got their unusual or unpredictable names, some of which are obvious, some less so.
Travis: And what do people need to know in case they want to be there at the Pryor Center? It’s Thursday night, right?
Boice: It’s Thursday night at 6 o’clock, I believe.
Travis: All right. And it’s free to attend.
Boice: Absolutely.
Travis: Well, Dan, thank you so much for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you at the Pryor Center.
Boice: Well, Jack, I appreciate the chance to talk and hope to see as many folks as can make it out, and hope that maybe we can all learn some things together.
That was the creator of Naming Arkansas, Dan Boice, speaking with Ozarks at Large’s Jack Travis. Dan will be at the Pryor Center this Thursday at 6 p.m. You can visit the Pryor Center’s Facebook page for more information about the event.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
