What's in a Name?

Nobody has ever seriously disputed the right of North Dakota to make a present to the entertainment world of bubbly Bandleader Lawrence ("Champagne Music") Welk. Lawrence Welk was merely born in Strasburg, North Dakota, and few at the time ever thought that he would grow up to intoxicate millions of music lovers with champagne music. As it turned out, North Dakota's Welk became an answer to Wisconsin's Liberace. But, after Lawrence Welk, wondered many a North Dakotan, what?

It was a perplexing question. North Dakota's boosters, faced with a continuing decline of population (from 1930's 681,000 to 1950's 620,000) and an apparent lack of interest on the part of industry to make its home in North Dakota, tried to find out what was wrong with the state. It was not Lawrence Welk's fault. As a matter of fact, Welk has seldom missed a chance to give the old homestead a warm plug on his TV show. It was just that so many people on the outside have the ridiculous idea that prairie-patched North Dakota is too blamed cold in the winter (lowest recorded temp.: --60DEG) and too darned hot in the summer (highest: 124DEG).

Discussing this state of affairs with a legislative committee, one Homer Ludwick, executive secretary of the Greater North Dakota Association, made his point by exhibiting a children's jigsaw-puzzle map of the U.S. Sure enough, the symbols on the North Dakota puzzle piece were a spear of grain and a thermometer showing a low of-- 45DEG. Furthermore, people on the outside were always talking about a "blizzard sweeping out of North Dakota." Something, Ludwick demanded, has got to be done to counter all this bad publicity.

Instantly there came the idea that has been cropping up in North Dakota for a long time: a new name for the state, something that was more romantic--anything, in fact, that would make North Dakota sound gay, cheerful as a bottle of champagne. That is how the question stood. Legislators were batting new names around, and Homer Ludwick had hope in his heart. Perhaps they would drop "North," and call it "Dakota." Or maybe "Miami," someone suggested, or "Dixie," or "East Guadalajara," or, with a nod to their Canadian neighbor, "South Manitoba." Maybe even "Welk."

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