What's In A Name?

The battle of Mill Springs holds the record for the number of names given to a single Civil War battle. While many battles have a couple of different names (Southern troops tended to name battles after nearby towns, while Northern troops picked streams or rivers), Mill Springs has at least nine. During the War Between the States, the Confederates usually called it the battle of Fishing Creek, and the Federals often called it the battle of Logan's Cross Roads (reversing the normal usage mentioned above). 

In addition to Fishing Creek, Logan's Cross Roads, and Mill Springs (and variants such as Mill Creek, Mill Spring, and Mills Spring), the battle has also been called the battle of Somerset, Webb's Cross Roads, Nancy, Cliff (or Clifty) Creek, Old Fields, and the battle of the Cumberland. Obviously, some of these names are rather dubious, as Webb's Cross Roads is over ten miles from the battlefield, and the town of Nancy did not exist in 1862.

The best name would probably be Logan's Cross Roads, since that was the immediate area of the battle.  Fishing Creek is about four miles from the battle site, and Mill Springs is actually nine miles south, on the other side of the Cumberland River.  But over the years, and especially in modern literature, the battle has come to be best known as Mill Springs.

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See: Raymond E. Myers, "The Zollie Tree" (Louisville, 1964), pp. 1 and 114; "Confederate Veteran" Vol. 6, No. 4 (April 1898), p. 148, and Vol. 18 (1910), p. 550; Louisville "Daily Courier" No. 96 (New Series), 3 February 1862, p. 3 (quotes the Cincinnati "Commercial"); James R. Binford, "Recollections of the Fifteenth Regiment of Mississippi Infantry, C.S.A." (Henry Patrick Papers, Z215, Vol. 5, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson), p. 21; James Birney Shaw, History of the Tenth Indiana Volunteer Infantry (Lafayette, IN, priv. publ., 1912), p. 138.