Where the Name "Adena" Came From


01/13/2026.

I have occasionally written about the Newark Earthworks for the Columbus Free Press. While I am fine with their activism (now more than ever!), they do have a bit of a history of being a bit too accepting of what might be called fringe science and history.

So, I have worried a bit about what I have written, in which I try to be fairly careful about scientific accuracy, giving credence to other articles by other authors who are less careful. In the end, I decided go ahead, and to provide as much as I could under the theory of letting better information appear there. [But also see the note at the end.]

So, this is about an article by Geoffrey Sea, in which he makes a statement that just isn't backed up by fact. (I'm afraid it also calls into question some of his other claims.) In Ohio advertises its Anti-Native imperialism to the world in time for Thanksgiving, he says,

At least the Adena name did not come from the name of a white property owner, but from the name of Thomas Worthington's estate in Chillicothe, a name Worthington chose because of its felicitous meaning in many world languages, including Algonquian. "Adena" is a word that means 'burial' mound in Shawnee and Ojibwe language, making it an ideal indigenous name for the ancient civilization of the Ohio Valley.

(The article gets some things right, and some things wrong, but without knowing much more, it is hard for the reader to know which is which.)

Mr. Sea also runs a Facebook Group called "Adena Core". In his introduction to it, he says much the same thing,

Contrary to common misinformation, the name "Adena" can be considered an indigenous name. The name was chosen by Ohio state founder Thomas Worthington to name his estate in Chillicothe Ohio, on which the type-site Adena Mound was located. However, Worthington was a personal friend of the Shawnee chiefs Tecumseh and Bluejacket, and there is strong evidence that Worthington borrowed the name Adena from them as the word means 'burial mound' in Shawnee language. It is therefore an appropriate name for the civilization.

It is a nice thought that "Adena" really has a Native American origin. But it is important to know whether that is really the case, and it is in my nature to look carefully at claims.

I questioned this on that Adena Core Facebook group. I have a bit of an interest in Proto-Algonquian, the ancestral language that led to the different Algonquian languages, like Lenape (Delaware), Micmac, Powhatan, Massachusetts, Ojibwa, Cree, Sauk, Meskwaki (Fox), Shawnee, Myaamia (Miami), Cheyenne, and Blackfoot. And I have various reference works related to them, including dictionaries and works like Shawnee Stems and Roots and the Jacob P. Dunn Miami Dictionary, by linguist C. F. Voegelin, Indiana Historical Society, 1938-1940. Prehistory Research Series, vol. 1. I hadn't seen any Shawnee word for burial mounds, and in other works I'd looked in for "burial mounds", I hadn't seen anything that looked like "Adena".

On the Facebook group, as I started asking questions, his story started shifting. He started talking about how "Adena" was Ojibwe for burial mound, and how Ojibwe was a bit of a lingua franca in Ohio, and that Worthington and Tecumseh "could" have therefore talked in Ojibwe and that would be where Worthington got the name. I was having trouble finding any evidence that this was true and kept asking questions rather than accepting his assertions at face value.

The above is according to my recollection, because suddenly Mr. Sea blocked my access to the Adena Core group, and, as far as I can tell, deleted the whole conversation. This is antithetical to scientific inquiry.

So, let me now tell you some of what I found out trying to examine his claim.

In Proto-Algonquian (a measured reconstruction of what the ancestor language to the Algonquian languages looked like), the word that meant "mound" is

*makw-axkamik-aw-e-wa

When ancient languages are reconstructed (by looking at their daughter languages), the asterisk at the beginning identifies the word as reconstructed (meaning there is no direct attestation for it). When you are looking back 2 - 3,000 years, all Native American words will be reconstructed.

In that reconstruction, "*makw" has been identified to have meant something like a clump, and "*axkamik" meant the earth or ground. There is even an Ojibwe word (or phrase), derived from that Proto-Algonquian, that identifies them as such:

menkwakkemikeššin — he lies in a mound.

You can see how the "menkw" came from "*makw" and "akkemi" came from "*axkamik". The "keššin" is related to the verb "to lie".

[Such reconstruction doesn't look just at single words. It looks at words across many related languages, and searches for and applies regular sound changes within those languages that account for and verify the reconstructions.]

In other Algonquian words the Proto-Algonquian changed in other ways, so that there is the Menominee word "mi·nεhkε·hkan" for graveyard, and Lenape "me·naxk" for fort (as an earthwork or entrenchment). Meanings can diverge across the daughter languages.

At some point Mr. Sea responded to me, saying that the "Adena" meant "hill" and referred to the hills surrounding Worthington's home (though he still claimed a relation to a burial mound).

The thing is, there is some support for this. Ojibwe does have a root like "adena" ("adina") that means "hill", and that Mr. Sea noticed this. You can see that "adina" in the following words:

And yes, if you think that last word looks familiar, you are correct. That is where a certain city in California got its name. Here is one website (among many) that discusses its origin: About Pasadena.

However, "Adina" only appears in a combined form. Investigating it further, we find that Miami (another close linguistic relative to Shawnee and Ojibwe) also uses that same word in much the same way, in the form "atenwi". (If you think about it, "d" and "t" are very similar, and often are related in related languages.)

For Miami (from the Kaskaskia Illinois-to-French Dictionary, edited by Carl Masthay (2002)), some of what we find are

On top of that, there is a Proto-Algonquian reconstruction of "*aten" for hill. In addition to the above, it also shows up in Cree "wihpatinaw", a hollow between hills.

So, maybe there is something here.

However, none of those attestations refer to burial mounds. That said, this online Miami-Illinois dictionary does have a term for burial mounds: ciipayahkiki peepeehkwaahkionki. To my eye, the second word is related to the Ojibwe "Papik" in "Papikwadina" (with the idea of many smaller bumps) and the Proto-Algonquian "*axkimik" (bumps of earth). The first word means "ghost, or spirit, or corpse", and it or a variation is used throughout many Algonquian languages:

[Note that a "čipai" spirit is different from a "maneto" spirit, as the former refers to human spirits and the latter refers to one or more magical spirits. Oh, and "č" is a linguistic way of writing "ch".]

Anyways, if Ojibwe or Shawnee had some sort of "adena"-like term for a burial mound, it would probably be something like "čipadena". I can find no such word.

But here's the kicker: When it comes to how Thomas Worthington named his estate "Adena", we don't need to speculate or scour through Algonquian (or Proto-Algonquian) dictionaries. Because Worthington told us where he got the name. He told us in his diary!

From "Adena: Thomas Worthington House" by Stuart D. Hobbs (1958):

Diary entries indicate that in 1811 Worthington read a history of the world. The history began with a discussion of the Garden of Eden, "the seat designed for [Adam]." The definition of Eden struck Worthington, and he copied the following passage almost verbatim into his diary: "For Eden, or Adan, signifying pleasure, that name was given to places remarkable for the delightfulness of their situation, considered either in themselves, or comparatively with the adjacent country." [Emphasis added.]

It is easy enough to find the "history" Worthington was reading. It was "The Travels of the Late Charles Thompson, Esq.", written in 1744, where he is discussing locations in the Middle East named (probably) after Eden itself:

There are several Places which bear the Name of Eden . . .. There is a City near Tarsus in Cilicia still call'd Adena, and Aden is a noted one on the Coast of Arabia Felix; for Eden or Aden signifying Pleasure, that Name was given to Places remarkable for the Delightfulness of their Situation, consider'd either in themselves, or comparatively with the adjacent Country; which last seems to be the Case of Aden in Arabia. [Emphasis really added.]

Pretty close match, don't you think? But Thompson cribbed it from something even earlier, "An Historical Geography of the Old Testament", by Edward Wells, written in 1710:

Further, it is not to be question'd, but from the Hebrew Word Eden has been derived the Word Adena or Adana, which we find in Greek and Latin Authors, given as a proper Name probably to several Towns. There was a Town in Cilicia of this Name, pleasantly situated in a fruitful Soil. There is also a famous Port in Arabia, on the Entrance of the Red Sea, called Adena or Aden; which (to use Bishop Huet's Expression) for having been the most delightful Place of a very delightful Country, I mean of Arabia Felix, has been called it self Arabia Felix, as comprehending in it all the Beauties of that Country.

And finally, because I can, I tracked down Bishop Huet's original expression. Pierre Daniel Huet was the Bishop in Soissons and Avranches in France, and in 1691 he wrote "Traitté de Situation du Paradis Terrestre", or "A Treatise on the Location of the Terrestrial Paradise". Here's the original original (written in Late Middle French):

Telle estoit Adana ville de Cilicie, ainsi nommée pour la bonté de son terroir, & la beauté de sa situation. Tel est encore le village d'Eden, prés de Tripoli de Syrie, sur le chemin du Liban, où quelques-uns ont placé le Paradis terrestre. Et tel est enfin ce port celebre, nommé Adana ou Aden, si frequenté depuis plusieurs siecles, qui pour avoir esté le lieu le plus delicieux d'une region tres-delicieuse, je veux dire de l'Arabie Heureuse, a esté nommé luy-mesme l'Arabie Heureuse; comme renfermanten soy toutes les beautez de cette contrée;

To sum up: while it was a nice thought on Mr. Sea's part, "Adena" comes from a white man's name for his estate, and it is about as Old World and non-Indigenous as it could possibly be.



Note:

The articles I wrote were Did a lunar eclipse 2,000 years ago spark the Hopewell culture?, Sacred Native American ground: Moundbuilders Country Club continues to fight losing battle for third-rate golf course, and The Cycle of the Newark Octagon and the end of the “Major Standstill”. (Note that I do not write the headlines.)

I did go overboard in that first article. Yes, there was a full moon blood moon lunar eclipse the week before the maximum northerly moonrise in the year 14. But there was a blossoming among the Indigenous Peoples of the Hopewell Culture in all sorts of areas at that time. While such a lunar eclipse would have been particularly noteworthy, it could only have been small part of a whole suite of remarkable cultural changes spurring them on. I want to set this record straight (which is an important part of science).