What's in a name?(Arts & Literature)(If it's somewhere in Oregon, Lewis McArthur can tell you about it)

Byline: BOB KEEFER The Register-Guard

THINK OF A PLACE in Oregon and Lewis McArthur can almost certainly tell you about its name - not just what the name is, but exactly where it came from.

In a narrow sense, McArthur is the steadfast compiler and editor of the last three editions - and the next one, due out this summer - of Oregon Geographic Names, the 3 1/2 -pound bible of Oregon place names and the stories behind them.

The seventh edition, which will also feature a CD-ROM with maps and indexes, will list 9,676 place names. McArthur knows them all, intimately.

But in a larger sense, McArthur is the grand old man of Oregon geography. A dedicated amateur geographer, he is the state's acknowledged expert on why things are named the way they are.

"His knowledge of this state, the collective history in his mind, is unsurpassed," says Tom McAllister, a retired Portland newspaperman and longtime colleague on the Oregon Geographic Names Board, where McArthur has served since 1959. "Because history is the names."

Two names whose histories you have to get straight to understand this story are these: Lewis L. McArthur, the man about whom we are writing, and Lewis A. McArthur, his father, who was the originator and compiler of the first three editions of Oregon Geographic Names.

Writing that book and managing the place names of Oregon have constituted a family project stretching into nine decades. In this new century, the family fascination with place threatens to spill into a third generation of McArthurs.

A tall, vital man of 85 with gray hair, a firm handshake and a clear, booming voice, Lew McArthur - for "Lew" is …