Talk:Merrimack River

Use of term by Thoreau

Confusingly, the Thoreau article mentions "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers" (not Merrimack).

What is correct?

S. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.168.172.214 (talk) 14:23, 30 January 2003 (UTC)

The spelling has changed over time, as spelling tends to do. Merrimack is modern, Merrimac was more common in Thoreau's day. The questions is whether to update the spelling in the title of the book, so as not to confuse readers with a peripheral issue, or to explain the difference. I guess the latter.

David — Preceding unsigned comment added by DavidWBrooks (talk • contribs) 14:38, 30 January 2003 (UTC)

People are already confused -there are thousands of sites listed on Google with each spelling. It appears that the correct spelling for this river is Merrimack while the one in Missouri is Meramec but the USGS name server is down at the moment. --rmhermen — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rmhermen (talk • contribs) 14:55, 30 January 2003 (UTC)

What does Old Celtic language mean?

What does "old Celtic language" mean? Is this some sort of proto-Celtic language that has only been posited, or does it mean old Welsh, old Scots, old Gaelic, what? 172.175.127.8 06:05, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"Old Celtic language" refers to old Scots, I believe. As for the spelling of the Merrimack River, the difference should be explained better. There is no difference between the Merrimac and Merrimack Rivers; they are one and the same. The town of Merrimac, Massachusetts is named after the river, as is the town of Merrimack, New Hampshire, near to where its source is located. Much of the confusion probably arises from the fact that Merrimack, New Hampshire is much larger and more industrial, and is also closer to the river's source. Thus, people began to adopt the name "Merrimack," even if the original spelling was "Merrimac."

Old maps and literature list the river as the "Merrimac River." Currently, highway signs and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts refer to it as the "Merrimack River." Both spellings are accepted and appropriate. I would tend to lean towards the original spelling, however.

-AaronS — Preceding unsigned comment added by AaronS (talk • contribs) 06:24, 23 December 2004 (UTC)

Tweaked spelling explanations

I've tweaked the different-spelling explanation yet again, hopefully to remove confusion (note that I returned Thoreau's book title to its original spelling; hopefully the note near the beginning will remove confusion). I also put in the Indian naming etymology, as referenced by the Merrimack River Watershed Authority, and removed that Celtic reference, since I know of no historical connection between old Celtic terminology and New English river naming (unless you're one of those America's Stonehenge true believers!) - DavidWBrooks 13:39, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I fixed the wording of the explanation of the alternate spelling. It should be noted that "Merrimac River" or "Merrimac Valley" are still used today by some people and businesses, so it is not something that is only reserved to centuries ago.

As for the Celtic reference, it comes from a Graham Maasterton novel, where the author refers to an abyss as a "merrimack." Interestingly enough, there is a Parisian black metal band named Merrimack, which took the name for this reason.

-AaronS (Dec 23 @ 9:03 PM EST)

Does he connect the word to the river? It may just be a coincidence. - User:DavidWBrooks, 01:03, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

GA Passed

Congratulations! Your article is a great start on this waterway. As you think about improving it, please add a few more inline references to support the facts. Also, check out Ohio River, Mississippi River and others for ideas on expanding the article. --CTSWyneken^(talk) 21:08, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

a Good Article Review has been initiated

This article has been brought up for delisting at Good Article Review because it does not meet the following criteria at WP:WIAGA:

• Criteria 2: Insufficient referencing. This article makes many claims, which are not linked directly to the source of those claims via inline citations. There are very few references at ALL.
• Criteria 3: Insufficiently broad. Many aspects of the Merrimack River are missing, such as history as an industrial center, ecology, tributaries. It needs some expanding before it achieves this aspect of GA.

As someone born in Nashua and raised in Hudson NH, I wish this article was better. I may improve it myself in the future, but I must admit, this is well below GA level. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 06:01, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

GA Delisted

A strong consensus of editors has proposed that this article be delisted from the Good Article list, as it does not meet the good article criteria at this time. For an archived discussion that arrived at this decision, see: Wikipedia:Good article review/Archive 17. If this article CAN be brought up to standard, please feel free to renominate it in the future. Good luck and happy editing! --Jayron32|talk|contribs 18:46, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Hoaky etymology

I'm sorry, I know this is going to get some people excited. I'm moving this out prior to replacing it with one that cites sources:

"The name Merrimack is believed to have been adopted by early European settlers from Merruasquamack, a name meaning "swift water place" that given by Native American tribes for the portion of the river between Manchester, New Hampshire and Lowell, Massachusetts. A number of tribes occupied the watershed and gave the river several different names.

The original Euro-American spelling of the river's name was Merrimac, but the river is now named Merrimack. Both variants were used in early days and can continue to be seen in the present day in the names of two New England towns."

The problem is, I can't find out who on earth believes what is affirmed to be believed. I did a search on that weird name and all I can find on it is a series of copied web sites, which all use the same name and all use the same words with minor variations. This is a copyright violation of some sort on their part. Here it is uncited. Frankly it looks like original research by some eager beaver anxious to add his interpretation of a possible Indian name to the pile. Since Algonquian is imperfectly known and that name is imperfectly known it is not possible to say with certainty what it means or what its original form was in English phonetic spelling. If there is an author of that name or if anyone knows the author of that name theory let him speak up. Otherwise I must take it as original research slipped in there casually without references. As for the Euro-American, what kind of hoaky term is that? It is part of the copyright violation. And those assertions of the original spelling totally contradict the sources I can find. And as for the modern names reflecting the ancient usages, well, no evidence. Pure guess work. I'll be replacing this with new paragraphs today.Dave 12:26, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

FYI - those "copied" pages are wikipedia scrapes, which are perfectly fine because of the open-source license. But they do cause a problem, as you have found: Online searches are sometimes swamped by wikipedia copies, so that incorrect information in an article begins to look legitimate because it is repeated. - DavidWBrooks 13:56, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

'06 Flood

Considering the flood of '07 and especially those of '36, '38, and 1852, don't we spend too much time on this one event that just happened to be a big deal to us at the time? I think we need to say a lot less about this one flood, and a little more about historic flooding and what has been done to the river to control it. Thoughts and/or volunteers? Thanks, CSZero (talk) 17:31, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup/Expansion

There were conversations on the Merrimack Valley (Massachusetts) and Merrimack Valley (New Hampshire) articles about merging the two. Since they are recognized regions of their respective states, I figured the merge was incorrect, but what may be correct is to put the common history here - hence, tagging the History section for expansion. There is a lot more that can be said about the history of the river and life along it. Entire books have been written about the precontact/contact period alone. As for the cleanup tag, the part that needs to be cleaned up is the flooding section. As I mentioned above, the section is way too focused on one particular flood event. I think the tags were therefore warranted. Are you contesting any of this? CSZero (talk) 23:27, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

No, I was requesting detail. Those tags mean nothing without detail (such as you have just given) about what the editor thinks needs to be "expanded" or "cleaned up" (especially the last one, which is is so vague as to be meaningless).

I'm a little confused about the flooding comments - the section head says "May 2006 Flooding" so what's the problem with it being "way too focused on one particular flood event"? Do you mean it should be generalized to talking about all floods that have occurred, or something else? - DavidWBrooks (talk) 00:35, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah. I think given the fact that there were far more significant floods in the 1930s, and other moderate floods over the last 150 years, that singling out "2006 flooding" because it happened to be a flood that happened while Wikipedia was being worked on makes it come across as overly-significant - reminds me of a debate on the big fire in Lawrence a year or so ago. So yes, I'd say the section should be generalized. CSZero (talk) 01:04, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't have much to add, except that I agree, the most recent floodings pale in comparison to previous decades, they are just much more vivid in our memories and shouldn't be given undue prominence. EraserGirl (talk) 02:24, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: Make Merrimack Valley a disambiguation page

Please look at the Merrimack Valley article. This article does not seem well named. In Massachusetts we use this specific term in one way, in New Hampshire we use it another way, and people familiar with geography and topography use it another way! Given the variety of ways in which this term is used, perhaps Merrimack Valley shouldn't be a regular article, but rather should be a disambiguation page.

Please see the discussion at Talk:Merrimack_Valley. RK (talk) 17:49, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Caption of photo

I've never used a talk page before, but there is something in this article which i must address. There is a photo, "View from River Street in Haverhill, Massachusetts." This photo was taken near where the Friend's Landing gay club used to be, which is across from Central Plaza, which is on Water Street, NOT River Street. I have changed this a few times in the last year or so, and it keeps changing back to River Street. Please note this picture is of Water Street.

Thank you, Haverhill Resident. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.74.8.247 (talk) 14:27, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Drainage area of Merrimack River and tributaries?

Can someone please add this data? It seems to exist for many articles about river systems. Cbmccarthy (talk) 11:36, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

The total watershed area was already in the article. I have merged in the Merrimack River Watershed article, which lists the major subwatersheds but does not provide their areas. (Not sure if you were asking for subwatershed areas as well.) --Ken Gallager (talk) 13:45, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Photos

I moved a just-placed aerial photo of the mouth of the river into the Infobox, since it is informative of the size and development of the Merrimack, and moved down a pretty but uninformative shot of the river in Lowell. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 12:17, 29 March 2021 (UTC)