Editing Sonoma County, California (section)

==Etymology==
[[File:Edward S. Curtis Collection People 100.jpg|thumb|180px|''[[Pomo]] girl'' c. 1924, by [[Edward S. Curtis]] from ''The North American Indian'' volume 14]]

According to the book ''California Place Names'', "The name of the Indian tribe is mentioned in baptismal records of 1815 as ''Chucuines'' or ''Sonomas'', by Chamisso in 1816 as ''Sonomi'', and repeatedly in Mission records of the following years."<ref name="Gudde"/>

According to the Coast Miwok and the Pomo tribes that lived in the region, Sonoma translates as "valley of the moon" or "many moons". Their legends detail this as a land where the moon nestled, hence the names [[Sonoma Valley]] and the "Valley of the Moon."<ref name="GratonGaming">{{cite news|url=https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/why-graton-is-trying-to-get-into-gaming|title=Why Graton is trying to get into gaming|last=May|first=James|date=May 19, 2003|work=Indian Country Today|access-date=January 25, 2009}}</ref> This translation was first recorded in an 1850 report by General [[Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo]] to the California Legislature.<ref>{{cite book|last=Hanna|first=Phil Townsend|title=The Dictionary of California Land Names|publisher=The Automobile Club of Southern California|location=Los Angeles|year=1951|page=311}}</ref> [[Jack London]] popularized it in his 1913 novel ''[[The Valley of the Moon (novel)|The Valley of the Moon]]''.

In the native languages there is also a constantly recurring ending ''tso-noma'', from ''tso'', the earth; and ''noma'', village; hence ''tsonoma'', "earth village."<ref>{{cite book |author=Alfred Louis Kroeber |title=Handbook of the Indians of California |url=https://archive.org/details/handbookofindian00kroe |url-access=registration |publisher=Dover Publications |location=New York City, N.Y. |year=1976|isbn=9780486233680 }}</ref> Other sources say Sonoma comes from the Patwin tribes west of the [[Sacramento River]], and their [[Wintu language|Wintu]] word for "nose". Per ''California Place Names'', "the name is doubtless derived from a [[Patwin]] word for 'nose', which Padre Arroyo (Vocabularies, p. 22) gives as ''sonom'' ([[Suisun people|Suisun]])." Spaniards may have found an Indian chief with a prominent protuberance and applied the nickname of ''Chief Nose'' to the village and the territory.<ref>[[Alfred L. Kroeber]], AAE 29:354 [1932]</ref> The name may have applied originally to a nose-shaped geographic feature.<ref name="Gudde">{{cite book|title=California Place Names: The Origin and Etymology of Current Geographical Names|first=Erwin Gustav|last=Gudde|author2=Bright, William|year=1998|location=Berkeley|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=0-520-21316-5|edition=Second|pages=g. 370|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/californiaplacen00gudd}}</ref>

Jesse Sawyer argues that it is from Wappo ''tso-noma'', meaning "redwood place."<ref>{{cite web |author=Jesse O. Sawyer |title=The Naming of Sonoma |url=http://cla.berkeley.edu/item.php?bndlid=1600 |publisher=The Bear Flag News |location=University of California, Berkeley |year=1980}}</ref>