MAHOMET, Ill. (WAND) — There's a lot that goes into a name.
Mahomet's path to finding its name started with another town in central Illinois.
Mahomet was once called "Middletown." There's only one problem with that: there's another Middletown in Logan County.
So the people of the village had to figure something else out. They then turned to the post office named after a Native American from out on the East Coast.
The rest? That's all history — history that chamber of commerce director Walter Pierce loves to dive into.
"In 1840, Daniel Porter sort of settled in Mahomet and didn't really know he had to name the town," Pierce said. "There was a Native American in Connecticut who was very important to the settles there and his name was Mamohat...and the translation, it sort of became Mahomet."
The rough translation of the name stuck, giving central Illinois the village now known as Mahomet.
