What’s in a name? Maybe it’s derived from a Native American word, or a location or from a beloved family member or a myth. There are plenty of memorable ones throughout Leelanau, so we did some digging...

Leelanau
Let’s start right at the top, with the county itself. “Leelanau” has been cited as a Native American word meaning “Land of Delight.” With its rolling hills, sparkling lakes and the surrounding blue waters of Lake Michigan, that would make sense. If it was true.

While the name sounds like it could be Native American, according to the Library of Michigan, it was made up by Indian agent and ethnographer Henry Schoolcraft. He created many faux Indian place names in the state, and gave the name “Leelinau” to some Native American women in his stories. More recent research shows Leelinau was first used as a pen name by Schoolcraft’s wife Jane in writings for The Literary Voyager, a family magazine they co-wrote in the 1820s. She was of Ojibwa and Scots-Irish descent, and wrote in Ojibwe and English.

Verterra Winery
When Paul and Marty Hamelin decided to start a winery, they knew they lacked one key ingredient: A name. And not just any name, but one unlike any other, which would enable them to distribute outside the state. Finding the right name that wasn’t already taken wasn’t easy. “It turns out there are a lot of wineries. We’d come up with one, do a trademark search, and find duplicates. We did that for three years,” Paul says.

Eight months before their first harvest, they went to the Notre Dame Latin website and ran across the word terra, which means land. They then found veritas, which means truth. They decided to combine them, as their product was indeed “true to the land,” with grapes grown and harvested in Leelanau County. “It was something that had meaning for us. It embodies our business practice. Nobody else had it and we grabbed it.

Baabaazuzu
The so-called “Pioneers of the Upcycled Sweater Movement” have been at it for some 30 years, creating handcrafted mittens, gloves, hats, and more. Company Founder and CEO Sue Burns credits her husband’s laundry mistake for launching the company, when he put her favorite wool sweaters in the dryer. Rather than simply break down in tears, she repurposed them, cutting up the shrunken remains and crafting them into jackets and matching hats for their two young daughters.

That launched a business, and for a name she turned to the original source of the products and her own nickname, courtesy of the person who accidentally launched it. “All the products were made from post-consumer wool, and Zuzu is my nickname. My husband Kevin came up with it, and it rolled off the tongue easily. Thirty years in still no one sounds remotely like us,” she says.

9 Bean Rows
“We thought we had a name for it,” says Jen Welty of the farmstead/bakery/café she owns with her husband Nic. When they found out their choice was already taken – a familiar story, yes? – they started casting about for an alternative. Sitting around a fire one night with her family, her father and sister – both English majors in college – started reciting a poem by William Butler Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.”

The poem is about going to a place of and for serenity, and that’s the kind of atmosphere they sought for the farmstead. It includes the line “Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee.” Welty says when they got to that line her ears perked up. “I said, ‘That’s it.’ I love that it pays homage to my father and family.” Welty says it also offers a clever marketing aspect. “We also liked that it started with a number. Alphabetically that puts it first in line.”

Fountain Point Resort
Erik Zehender, who runs the popular summer resort on Lake Leelanau with his brother Theo Early, says the origin of the name dates back to the mid-1800s. French-Canadian explorers were seeking oil and gas, and when they came upon the point of land in West Grand Traverse Bay, they drilled, but instead they found – water.

“The flow was significant and ran year-round,” says Zehender. The water came from an aquifer deep underground, perhaps actually running under Lake Michigan, and boasted a high content of sulfur. “Sulfur springs are good for the skin,” says Zehender, and when the cottages there were built in the 1880s, the property was dubbed Fountain Point Resort and Mineral Springs. Zehender says his great-grandfather bought the property, so he and his brother are the fourth generation to run it, though the “Mineral Springs” part of the name was dropped somewhere along the way. Yes, the fountain is still running.