Vermilion River (Ohio) - Variant Names

Variant Names

The United States Board on Geographic Names settled on "Vermilion River" as the stream's official name in 1899. According to the Geographic Names Information System, the Vermilion River has also been known as:

• Vermillion River (double 'L')
• Oulame Thepy

• The Vermilion River, formerly "Vermillion" (double 'L') has been known by that name since at least 1760 in explorer George Croghan's journal, and was also recorded in Montressor's 1764 journal of the Bradstreet expedition; and it is denoted correctly on a 1778 map by Hutchins. In Croghan's 1760 journal, he records it as also named "Oulame Thepy", that being a phonetic interpretation of one of the Native-American tribes' names for it. "Thepy"(or "sepe") was a Native word for 'river' or 'creek', and "Oulame" may translate directly as 'paint'; this River seems to be referred to as "Paint Creek" by later 18th-century European inhabitants -- it is said that the local Native-Americans used the purplish-red clay from along this river, as a sort of paint on their bodies. But the name "Vermillion" undoubtedly was an attribution by the first European explorers here, who apparently presumed that the red clay was the same as the substance (and valuable commodity) 'vermillion'; and although the substance really instead turned out to be, for them, worthless reddish mud, but the name stuck anyway.
• The prior spelling for this river (and the Erie County township as well as the city through which it flows) was "Vermillion" (double 'L') until about the end of the 19th-century, when the double 'L' was dropped, supposedly due to the spelling conflict with nearby Ashland County's township of 'Vermillion' (which is not upon this river).
• Although the Geographic Names Server also listed "River en Grys" as an alternate name for the Vermilion River and also for the Black River, but actually that name was originally intended for what is now called Beaver Creek, which is in between these two rivers.