How Lorain Got Its Name

Back in July 1918, we were a little more than a year into our involvement in World War I. Not surprisingly (except for the spelling), “DISTROY HUN ARMY” IS AIM OF ALLIES” is the headline of the July 31, 1918 edition of the Lorain Times-Herald.

Besides the war stories, there’s plenty of interesting things on the page. Employees of the National Tube  Co. were about to receive a wage increase of 10 percent; the first coke was about to be drawn from the new ovens at the National Tube plant that day; the earnings of United States Steel were ‘greatest in history; and the Elks enjoyed turtle soup at their hall on Tuesday night.

But what caught my attention was the small article about how Lorain got its name. It’s a nice little explanation for anyone who has never heard the explanation.

“How did Lorain get its name?” asked the article. It noted, “That question is asked often these days when the province of Lorraine in Europe figures so prominently in the news dispatches and when there is some talk of changing the city’s name to adopt the french spelling.

“The city took its name from the original Lorraine.

“It was named from the county of Lorain by Judge Heman Ely from whom Elyria took its name.

“The judge had traveled in Lorraine and was so impressed with its beauty that he decided to name the county in which he controlled the land for the beautiful French province.”

The article goes on to note that when the village of Charleston had to come up with a new name (as ‘Charleston’ was already taken), it was the late Charles S. Vorwerk who had suggested naming the village ‘Lorain’ after the county.

Vorwerk’s suggestion was a clever idea (though perhaps a wee bit weaselly). It gave Lorain a charming name, as well as prominence as the namesake port city in the county, and cemented Vorwerk's fame as one of the incorporators of the city when he passed away in 1914.

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UPDATE (July 22, 2020)
The above article explains how Lorain got its name, but as we shall see, it’s not exactly clear how the county got its name.

What am I talking about? Well, I recently received an interesting email from a regular reader of this blog who is also a local historian. 

"I just noticed that you recently blogged the old legend about the origin of the county’s name,” he wrote. "I guess you were unaware that the originally proposed county name was apparently “Colerain.”"

He noted his source was an 1822 Sandusky newspaper, and that this is also observed on the Lorain County Wiki entry. 

This was all new to me. But the November 13, 1822 issue of the Sandusky Clarion does include a mention of the Ohio General Assembly’s plan "for a new county to be set off from Huron, Medina and Cuyahoga to be called Colerain."

The name “Colerain” apparently comes from Coleraine, a town in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. It’s a popular name in Ohio, with Colerain Townships located in Hamilton, Belmont and Ross Counties. There’s also a community in Belmont County.

So did Lorain County get its name because the name “Coleraine" was already being used in other parts of Ohio for townships as well as a community? It’s a good question that I can’t answer.

The reader who pointed all this out to me also poked some holes in the Judge Ely naming story. He made the observation that ‘Lorain’ is not pronounced the same way as ‘Lorraine,’ the French province. “Lorraine is spoken more like we would say ‘Lorenna’ with a very soft “a,” almost imperceptible,” he noted.

“It kind of dishonors the place in France which it is supposedly named in honor of, being that it is both misspelled and mispronounced,” he humorously observed.

Anyway, how Lorain County really got its name is a pretty good mystery that someday will hopefully be solved.