“The sound of water splashing or dripping fast and hard”
You know this word. You just don’t know you know it.
Every time you say “Whatcom” (the county, the creek, the falls, the lake, the college) you are speaking a Coast Salish word. Settlers flattened the consonants and stripped the meaning, but the word persists: Xwótqwem in Nooksack (Lhéchalosem), QwotQwem in Lummi (Xwlemi Chosen). It is an onomatopoeic word that captures the specific acoustic experience of a waterfall crashing fast and hard into the sea, a waterfall that once plunged directly into Bellingham Bay at the mouth of what is now Whatcom Creek.
Most people who use the name daily have no idea they are speaking Nooksack and Lummi. This site exists to change that.
A note on this site’s name
This website’s URL uses the Lummi spelling, QwotQwem, because that is the form we first encountered, through the Children of the Setting Sun Productions’ 2023 art installation and through the Lummi community’s public use of the word. We did not initially know that linguistic scholarship identifies the Nooksack form, Xwótqwem, as the basis of the documented place name system. We learned that through the research presented here, particularly the work of Brent Galloway and Allan Richardson with Nooksack elders.
Both forms are real. Both languages are Central Coast Salish. Both peoples used the creek mouth as a seasonal fishing camp. Both have cultural legitimacy in naming this place. This site honors both, and is transparent about how our own understanding evolved. That transparency is itself part of what we advocate on the Language Sovereignty page: when you learn something you didn’t know, you say so.
What you’ll find here
The Word
The full linguistic story of Xwótqwem / QwotQwem: where it comes from, what it precisely means, why “noisy water” misses the point, and the scholars and elders who preserved it.
The Place
The waterfall, the creek, the camp at the creek mouth. How the word traveled from Indigenous toponym to settler settlement to county name, without consent, and a full year before the treaty that dispossessed the people who named it.
Who Profits from “Noisy Water”
The translated meaning of this word has become a branding device for festivals, publications, and civic organizations in Whatcom County. Who uses it, who credits Indigenous communities, and who doesn’t.
The Pattern
Whatcom is not an isolated case. Across the United States, Indigenous place names have been absorbed into settler geography while the connection to Indigenous peoples is severed. Denali, Kuwohi, Mount Blue Sky, and the scholarship documenting this national pattern.
Language Sovereignty
You want to use an Indigenous word, name, design, or cultural reference in your project, business, or event? Here’s what that actually requires. Who to contact, what to ask, what consent looks like, and what the difference is between appropriation and ethical engagement.
Sources
Every claim on this site is sourced. Full bibliography of the linguistic scholarship, historical records, tribal publications, and news coverage that inform these pages.
“People forget Whatcom is a Lummi word. We need to remind them we’re still here.”
Troy Olsen, Lummi fisherman, 2020