“Baugo means ‘devil water’”

The claim · carried in the county parks master plan; tested November 2026

The claim: the St. Joseph County parks master plan glosses the name of Baugo Creek and its bay as "devil water," tying it to the creek's rapid rise after heavy rain. The gloss prints in the plan unattributed — no speaker, no source, no language named. The wider record: the name's documented forms run Banbango and Bangango in the Indiana Names Research Center's variants, Bawbawgo in Chapman's county history, and Baubaugo in the plan itself (the Land leg owns the series whole). The standard placename list for Indiana's Native-origin names, citing Ronald Baker's place-names scholarship and local historians, gives the derivation as a shortening: Baugo is "a shortening of 'Baubaugo', which is claimed by some local historians to be a Potawatomi word meaning 'devil' or 'devil river', referring to the intensity of its floods." The verdict: the shortening — Baugo from Baubaugo — stands at the strength of the scholarship the list cites. The devil gloss does not stand at that strength in any carrier reached: in the plan it is unattributed, and in the list it is expressly claimed by some local historians, with its explanation (the floods' intensity) attached to the claim rather than to a linguistic record. It prints here as a claimed gloss, honestly labeled — a flood-country name story that may be true and is not proven. The file stays open as GAP-O1-11, and its settler is named: Baker's From Needmore to Prosperity (1995), creek entry read whole.

Sources

1. St. Joseph County Parks master plan — the "devil water" gloss, unattributed (via this build's Land leg).
2. "List of placenames in Indiana of Native American origin," citing Baker, From Needmore to Prosperity (1995), and local historians — the shortening and the claimed gloss.
3. This build's Land leg — the name-form series and the creek's documented flood behavior.