Origin
Lovecraft concocted the word Miskatonic from a mixture of root words from the Algonquian language. Place-names based on the Algonquian languages, which was nearly extinct by the 17th century, are still found throughout New England. Anthony Pearsall believes that Lovecraft based the name on the Housatonic River which extends from the Long Island Sound through the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts and western Connecticut.
Daniel Harms suggests that Miskatonic is derived from the Misqat, a tribe descended from the Native Americans of Massachusetts.
Read more about this topic: Miskatonic River
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