Huger? Gervais? Who were they — and why are busy Columbia streets named after them?

Their names are mangled. Their traffic is cursed. They are ubiquitous as the summer heat. And they dwell in anonymity.

If you live or work in Columbia, there’s no avoiding two of the capital city’s most prominent thoroughfares: Gervais Street and Huger Street.

Along with Assembly Street, they are the Columbia’s busiest arteries that keep the heart of the city beating.

Huger is a blue-collar workhorse, running from the Olympia and Whaley mill villages to an abrupt end at Elmwood Cemetery. It hosts industrial buildings, a new-ish brewery, vacant lots and a hotel or two. It once fronted the state’s most notorious prison. McDonald’s is its haute cuisine.

Gervais Street is the Columbia’s Broadway, running from the river to the trimmed lawns of Forest Acres. It is flanked by bars, restaurants, hotels, banks and government buildings, most notably the S.C. State House. It’s where the state argues and the city parties.

Columbia’s other downtown streets are named for some familiar figures — Pickens, Sumter, Pulaski, Lincoln and Washington — but these two streets draw a blank. Who were these men, Mr. Huger and Mr. Gervais?

“John Lewis Gervais and Isaac Huger are two very important people in their relationship to South Carolina and Columbia,” said John Sherrer, director of cultural resources for Historic Columbia.

Gervais was born in Hanover, Germany, to French Huguenot parents. Huguenots were French Protestants who were persecuted by the Catholic majority in the 16th and 17th centuries. Many fled that persecution.

Gervais was educated in Germany and then immigrated first to England, then to Charleston. He fought in the Revolutionary War, participating in the defense of Charleston.

He became a planter, a member of the Continental Congress (1782 and 1783) and a South Carolina state senator from Ninety Six.

Without Gervais, there might not be a Columbia, Sherrer said.

By the 1780s, South Carolina’s population had grown to a point where members of the General Assembly from the interior and Upstate felt the long ride to the then-state capital of Charleston was an unfair advantage for Lowcountry politicians.

“That prompted representatives to find some political parity by moving the capital to the interior,” Sherrer said.

Gervais introduced a bill on March 4, 1786, that after much modification and contention established Columbia as the capital of the state. The new capital was laid out on a grid on the 650-acre plantation of Thomas and James Taylor near the location of Friday’s Ferry on the Congaree River.

Gervais pushed for and the General Assembly agreed on the name of “Columbia,” a personification of a heroic and beautiful woman, over “Washington,” the name of the country’s first president.

The city’s main artery in front of the capital was named after Gervais for those efforts.

Huger’s connection to Columbia is more tenuous, Sherrer said.

A year younger than Gervais, Huger was born on Limerick Plantation in what is now Berkeley County, also to Huguenot parents. He fought in the Revolution at Stono, Savannah, the siege of Charleston and Guilford Courthouse, N.C.

Huger was quite successful as a soldier and rose to the rank of brigadier general.

When the original street grid of Columbia was laid out, the north-south streets were named after notable Revolutionary War veterans from South Carolina. Although now less familiar than Sumter, Pickens and other South Carolina luminaries, Huger made the cut.

The street names “were a representation of the entire state, not just Columbia,” Sherrer said. “So he was honored as a military leader.”

(The only non-South Carolinian honored on a north-south street was Casimir Pulaski, a Polish nobleman and officer who fought with distinction around Charleston.)

But because of their Huguenot names, “You will often find a lot of mispronunciations,” Sherrer said.

If you are a visitor or new arrival, it is almost certain you’ve called them “Hugh-jer” or “Jer-vase.”

But the correct pronunciation of Huger is actually “YOU-gee.” And Gervais is ”Jer-VAY.”

Right?

Half right. Sherrer said.

Gervais, although almost universally pronounced “Jer-vay,” is actually closer to “Sher-vay,” said Sherrer, a Columbia native.

“And I like to go with the original French,” he said.

Gervais died in 1798 and is buried at St. Phillip’s Church in Charleston. Huger died in 1797 and is buried at Limerick Plantation.

This story was originally published September 3, 2018 at 6:20 AM.