Quahog (Family Guy)

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The actual skyline of Providence as viewed from the northwest looking southeast

Animated counterpart: suggesting a location mostly west of Providence for Quahog

Quahog (pronounced "koh-hawg", IPA /kohɑɡ/, "kwag", or "kwa-HOG", IPA /kwɑhɑɡ/) is a fictional suburb of Providence, Rhode Island where the animated television comedy Family Guy is set. The Griffin family, the Brown family, the Swanson family, and Glenn Quagmire live on Spooner Street; with the Griffin family residing at 31 Spooner Street.

1 History
2 People and places in Quahog
3 Possible real-world locations
4 The name Quahog
5 See Also

[edit] History

According to Mayor Adam West in "Fifteen Minutes of Shame", the town was founded by Myles "Chatterbox" Musket. He was a sailor on the colony of Rhode Island boat and was thrown overboard for "speaking his mind". According to legend, a magical clam rescued him and brought him ashore, had sex with him, sharing the same vision as Musket: founding a new town named Quahog. The clam later left Musket, because Musket contemplated killing him. Musket never spoke again. These events are celebrated every year as "Quahog Clam Day".

[edit] People and places in Quahog

Adam West, who portrayed Batman on the 1960's TV series, is the mayor of Quahog. The real Adam West voices the character. Quahog's local celebrities are the anchors of its Channel 5 news show, Tom Tucker and Diane Simmons. The Drunken Clam is a bar that protagonist Peter Griffin and his friends frequently visit.

[edit] Possible real-world locations

Seth MacFarlane, the show's creator, had been a resident of Rhode Island, and leaves unequivocal Rhode Island landmarks from which one may infer intended locations for events.

Several times every episode, the actual Providence skyline can be seen in the distance. The three buildings that are depicted are, from left to right and furthest to closest, One Financial Center, 50 Kennedy Plaza, and the Bank of America Tower. This ordering of buildings and the angle at which they are viewed (see figure at right) indicates that Quahog is primarily west of downtown Providence. If Quahog is to have a counterpart in Rhode Island geography and be consistent with this, it would have to be either Johnston, Cranston, North Providence, Scituate, or a western portion of Providence itself. However, in a few episodes Quahog is shown to have a coastline (see "Fifteen Minutes of Shame", "Fore Father", and "The Perfect Castaway"), which only Cranston and Providence possess. This is supported by the fact that the real-world "31 Spooner Street" is located in Cranston, immediately west of Roger Williams Park. In "E Peterbus Unum" A map of Rhode Island is shown with Quahog shown in red.

[edit] The name Quahog

The choice of the name "Quahog" for the town is possibly inspired by the real Rhode Island village of Quonochontaug. Many of the features of Quahog exist in Quonochontaug, such as a coast. Additional more conspicuous evidence can be see on the reverse of the UK DVD, clearly stating, "Meet the Griffins and find out what in the name of Quonochontaug, Rhode Island is going on in their heads!" Many people living in Quonochontaug commonly refer to their home as Quahog. However, the real Quonochontaug is a tiny village community of no more than a few hundred people located within the rural town of Charlestown, more than halfway across the state from Providence where the aforementioned urban skyline would not be visible.^{[original research?]}

A quahog is an edible clam. The word "quahog" has been absorbed into the English language as a loanword from the original Narragansett language, which is of the Algonquian languages family.