How Sultan got its name

It must certainly strike out-of-state readers as odd that we live in a town called Sultan. How did that happen, here in the midst of all of these Scandinavian timberfolk? Well, there are a couple of different answers to that.

First off, it turns out that Washington State has almost as many weird town names per square mile as Texas does. My personal favorites are Vader, the sister towns of Sappho and Beaver, and (of course) Humptulips. There's also a town called Zillah, which only counts because the local First Church of God decided to stop fighting the snickers that inevitably occurred whenever anyone referred to them as "First Church of God, Zillah." The church now sports a large metal mutant lizard statue bearing cross and Bible. But I digress.

When white settlers started moving into the Skykomish River valley, they encountered a Native American by the name of Tseult'd. The only problem was that none of the white settlers could actually say "Tseult'd," so they used the closest pronunciation they could manage. Then they tossed in a Christian name for good measure, and Tseult'd became known as Sultan John.

The river where Sultan John did most of his fishing became known as the Sultan River by association. Later, when a logging town was put in where the Sultan and Skykomish Rivers met, the town was named Sultan after the river. So there's no connection at all between the town's name and the Middle East. Nevertheless, the city limit signs are written in mock-Arabic script, and the local high school's sports teams are known as the Sultan Turks. I myself have referred to the hydroelectric dam up the Sultan River as "where the Sultan's turbines are kept."

In a town park, about fifty or sixty yards from the Sultan River, stands a bronze statue of Tseult'd. It's clumsily done, certainly, but at least they got his name right.