Provo, Utah: Spelled the Way a French Trapper's Name Sounded

Provo, Utah, is spelled the way a fur trapper’s name was said: Etienne Provot, “pronounced Provo,” as a 1924 history of the city puts it. The river took his name first, then the valley, then the town.

A trapper named Provot, or Provost

J. Marinus Jensen’s Early History of Provo, Utah introduces him as one of the “French Canadians and Creoles” who trapped in the Rocky Mountains in the early 1800s. “It is probable,” Jensen writes, “that Provo River and Provo Valley, and later Provo City derived their name from this man.”

The federal record agrees, though it uses a different spelling. Henry Gannett’s 1905 book on American place names calls the name of the river and the town “a contraction of the name—Provost—of the man for whom they were named,” and the U.S. Geological Survey’s place-names database repeats the idea in six words: “A contraction of the name Provost.” Hamilton Gardner’s 1913 history of nearby Lehi says the same thing, only more cautiously: a trapper named Provost “(sometimes spelled Proveau)” visited the north end of the valley, “and it is presumed that Provo is named after him.”

Which spelling is right?

You’ll see both, and Jensen tackles it head on. He cites another writer, Harris, who argued that “Provot” is correct, based on two records: the papers for the “estate of ‘Etienne Provot’” at the St. Louis courthouse, and an obituary in the Missouri Republican of July 4, 1850. Jensen’s conclusion is that Provo “seems to be an Anglicized form of the French word, Provot.” Drop the silent letter and you’ve got the city’s name.

Two stories that didn’t stick

Jensen also mentions two other explanations, and he doesn’t think much of either. One, “far less credible,” said that John C. Fremont named the river “Proveau” for a valuable horse he’d bought from a Frenchman of that name, which died and was buried near the stream. The other, which Jensen says “has recently been suggested,” traced the name to an Indian chief. Jensen’s answer: the chief “was not a prominent character,” and it’s “much more likely that he received his name from the river or from association with Provot.”

The river came first

By the time the settlers arrived, the river already had the name. In March 1849, about thirty families under John S. Higbee set out “to found Provo City,” Jensen says, and reached the Provo River about March 12. The Provo Branch of the church was organized on March 18, and on April 3 the settlers started building a stockade they called Fort Utah. Bancroft, in his 1889 history of the territory, places that fort “near the Timpanogos or Provo River,” a reminder that the river had another name too. Provo got its city charter on February 6, 1851, when Governor Brigham Young approved it along with those of Ogden, Manti and Parowan.

Provo isn’t the only Utah city that got a trapper’s name secondhand. Ogden took its name from a river too, and that river carries the name of a Hudson’s Bay Company man.

Sources & further reading

• J. Marinus Jensen, Early History of Provo, Utah (1924), pp. 27-29, 33-34, 76-77. Provot “pronounced Provo,” the “probable” origin, the Fremont horse story and the Indian chief theory, Harris’s evidence for the spelling, the arrival of the settlers in March 1849, Fort Utah, and the charter of 1851.
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 255. River and town named by contraction of the name Provost.
• Hamilton Gardner, History of Lehi (1913), p. 5. The trapper Provost, “sometimes spelled Proveau,” and the “presumed” link to Provo.
• H. H. Bancroft, History of Utah, 1540-1886 (1889), p. 308. Fort Utah “near the Timpanogos or Provo River.”
• GNIS feature 1444661 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for Provo: “A contraction of the name Provost.”