What's in a name?

MBTA Stations


 * Alewife Brook (a tributary of the Mystic River) and Alewife Brook Parkway – themselves named for the alewife, a type of fish long associated with the Massachusetts Bay area.
 * John Albion Andrew (May 31, 1818 – October 30, 1867) was elected in 1860 as the 25th Governor of Massachusetts, serving between 1861 and 1866, and led the state's contributions to the Union cause during the American Civil War (1861-1865). He was a guiding force behind the creation of some of the first African-American units in the United States Army, including the 54th Massachusetts Infantry.
 * Capen  was deacon of the church in 1658, Selectman sixteen years, repeatedly deputy to the Court, and thirteen years Town Recorder, and wrote more in the records than any other man. Mr. Capen was by trade a shoemaker. His house is supposed to have stood at the corner of Pleasant and Pond Streets.
 * John Singleton Copley was an Anglo-American painter, active in both colonial America and England. After becoming well-established as a portrait painter of the wealthy in colonial New England, he moved to London in 1774, never returning to America. In London, he met considerable success as a portraitist for the next two decades, and also painted a number of large history paintings, which were innovative in their readiness to depict modern subjects and modern dress.
 * Person Davis (1819-1894), a grain dealer who moved to the area in 1850 and built his estate near the intersection of Elm, Grove and Morrison Streets.
 * In 1880, Mr. Edward Kendall founded the Kendall Boiler and Tank company to manufacture steam boilers.
 * The Orient is an old-fashioned name for the East. It's where the sun rises, and, sure enough, the Latin root of orient means "rising," as in the rising of the sun. A historic section of Boston, Orient Heights is commonly considered part of East Boston; it is Boston's northernmost and northeasternmost neighborhood.
 * Zachariah B. Porter operated Porter's Hotel and left his name to the hotel's specialty, the cut of steak known as porterhouse.
 * John Quincy Adams (July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. During his time in Congress, Adams became increasingly critical of slavery and of the Southern leaders whom he believed controlled the Democratic Party. He was particularly opposed to the annexation of Texas and the Mexican–American War, which he saw as a war to extend slavery.
 * The Ruggles family of Roxbury arrived in the town as early as 1637. Although the Ruggles were prominent in the town's early days, they were split on the issue of American Independence. During the war, several members of the family fought on both sides.
 * Shawmut, according to 19th-century scholarship, is a term derived from the Algonquian word Mashauwomuk referring to the region of present-day Boston, Massachusetts.
 * James Sullivan (April 22, 1744 – December 10, 1808) was an early associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, served as the state's attorney general for many years, and as governor of the state from 1807 until his death. The most noteworthy case Sullivan sat on was a preliminary hearing in Commonwealth v. Nathaniel Jennison, where the court in 1783 decided that slavery was incompatible with the state constitution. Sullivan publicly expressed opposition to slavery, and predicted in his writings that the issue would become contentious in the future.