How did licking county Ohio get its name?

Answer 1

The obvious answer is that Licking County got its name from the Licking River that runs through it. But where did the the Licking River get its name? Nobody really knows. The general explanation (totally unattested) is that it was named from salt licks in the area. However, throughout that part of Ohio there are numerous rivers whose names end in -ing, which is the locative suffix in Lenape (the language of the Lenni Lenape, or Delaware, Indians). So one can at least guess that Licking was also a Lenape name. If that is the case (and this is just as much speculation as the salt lick explanation), then it probably came from the Lenape word lekau with the locative suffix -ing on the end, meaning the sandy (or gravelly) place.