Delhi, Louisiana: A Name from a Poem or a Tree

Delhi in Richland Parish began around eighteen thirty-nine as a cotton plantation called Deerfield, said to have been established on rich Mississippi Delta bottomland. The post office opened in the eighteen forties. At some point the name changed to Delhi, and two stories compete to explain it.

One says a professor named Allen chose the name after reading the poem Lalla Rookh by Thomas Moore, an Irish poet who set his romantic epic in the exotic east. The other says travelers had been carving the word Delhi into a prominent tree to use as a navigation marker, and the name simply stuck. The name may be uncertain, but the town itself is solid, still a Richland Parish town.