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Olentangy River
The Olentangy River merges into the Scioto River in downtown Columbus at Confluence Park and Restaurant. There's a lot of confusion about the name "Olentangy".
The first English settlers called the river Whetstone Creek. The reason they called it Whetstone was because that was the closest English translation for the Indian word for the stream: Keenhongsheconsepung. Now this Indian word literally meant "stone for your knife stream". Since English settlers used steel knives, they took this to mean a stone to sharpen your knife, or a whetstone. The Indians meant it as a source for stone knives due to the shale outcroppings commonly found along the stream.
How did the name get switched? It was officially changed by the state legislature. In the year 1833 Colonel James Kilbourne, who was then a member of the Legislature of Ohio, had an act passed giving Indian names to a number of streams in Central Ohio and by that act substituted the name of Olentangy for the then common name of Whetstone. The original Indian name of the present Olentangy was Keenhong-She-Con, or Whetstone Creek. But why the confusion? By the time this act was passed, Whetstone Creek had long been referred to, even as early as 1796 as the Olentangy. The problem was that both Darby Creek (the original Olentangy River) and Whetstone Creek enter the Scioto River. It may have been a simple point of confusion among early settlers mistakenly identifying one creek for the other.
According to Jonathan Alder's account, surveyors that frequented the Darby Creek area often met an old indian man living along the stream. The indian's name was Darby and so that was the name they gave to the creek.
For whatever the reason, the Whetstone or Keenhong-She-Con became known officially as the Olentangy. Keenhong-She-Con is the Delaware Indian word for "river of the red face paint" which aptly describes the Darby, but not the Olentangy.
The Olentangy River flows 88 miles from its headwaters approximately 3 miles south of Bucyrus in Crawford County through Marion and Morrow counties into Delaware and ending at the confluence with the Scioto River in downtown Columbus.