Vol.III, No.2
www.renewssource.com
January 15, 2017
How Did It Get That Name? By Pat Farrell
PRSRT STD U.S. Postage PAID San Antonio, Texas Paid Permit #1590
We probably don’t think too much about it but most would probably agree that our country is a pretty fascinating place to live. We have 50 states whose names come from sources that are not always provable, and many of which may have been attributed to words from the various Indian tribes that once occupied those lands. Each state’s legislature, in many cases after long periods of “discussion,” decided that the agreed upon name would be the one ultimately used for the state. The Residence Act of 1790 determined that the U.S. capital would be located somewhere along the Potomac River, and also granted George Washington the right to choose the site. He was authorized to name three Commissioners to help with the project. Once he identified acreage within the district which was then known as Columbia in honor of Christopher Columbus, he assigned the Commissioners to oversee the development
of the federal property. The Commissioners were instrumental in naming the city for President Washington in the District of Columbia. Located on the East Coast, the nation’s capital is not really convenient to states located in the mid-west or on the West Coast, however, as history points out, that capital was established when there were only the 13 original colonies which were located on the East Coast. With New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland (several of which were formed by mergers of previous colonies) to the north and Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia to the south the capital was pretty central for what then was then the United States. The names of several of the Eastern states seem to be derived from English or Welsh Royalty or areas located in those countries, like New Hampshire (named for the English county of Hampshire), New York (named for the Duke of York – later to be King James II), New Jersey (named for Jersey, the largest British Channel Island), Pennsylvania (named for William Penn and the locale’s forests “sylvanias” or Penn’s Woodlands), Maryland (named for Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles I), Virginia (Named for Queen Elizabeth I of England, known as the Virgin Queen), North and South Carolina (comes from “Carolus” a Latin form for Charles, in honor of King Charles I) and Georgia (named for King George II). There were also French, Spanish, Dutch and Russian nationals on the continent when the country was expanding beyond the original Colonies and quite a few of the state names were thought to have come from those languages as they were used to translate the
names given to the land by the indigenous people living there. For example, the Russian fur traders referred to the Unangan natives of the Aleutian Islands as “Aleuts” who had referred what is now Alaska as “a-lockshock.” The influence of the French language is apparent in Louisiana (named for French King Louis XIV and originally identified as “La Louisiana” or the Land of Louis. While some would agree that the combination of the French words “vert” meaning green and “mont” meaning mountain is why Vermont was so named, others attribute the use of green and mountain to the memory of the militia organization ‘s “Green Mountain Boys.” There were a number of Indian languages spoken throughout the country, Apache, Sioux, Choctaw, Algonquin and Iroquoian, to name a few, and several of the state names were derived directly from what the area was being called by the local tribes or from how the English, French, Spanish, etc. pronounced the Indian words. For example from the Choctaw albah amo we have Alabama, and from the Algonquian quinnitukqut and ilenweewa we have Connecticut and Illinois. It is easy to recognize the Indian influence in North and South Dakota (named for the Dakota tribes of the Sioux Indians) and in Utah (thought to be named for the Ute tribe of the Western Apache Indians). Many of the states were named from what the prominent river flowing through the territory was being called by those living there. The Colorado River and thus Colorado was named from the Spanish adjective for “red” because of its reddish silt and also named for its river by the Kansa tribe of the Sioux is Kansas. Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin were also named for the rivers running through them. There are a few states about which the
origin is either unknown or is in dispute. There has been speculation that the name for Maine could have come about when sailors in the area differentiated the islands off the coast from the mainland but as recent as this century there has been a claim that it was named for the French province of Maine. There remains a question as to whether Arizona’s name comes from the Basque settler’s phrase aritz onak meaning “good oak” or from the Spanish Arizonac interpretation of the native Pima phrase ali ?ona-g meaning “having a little spring.” It is still uncertain whether Idaho is derived from a Shoshone term ee-da-how (“gem of the mountains”) or the Apache word idaahe (“enemy”), or from neither. When it comes to the state of Oregon anyone can chose as they like whether it was derived from the French word ouragan (“hurricane”), the Chinook word oolighan (a smelt), the Spanish word orejon (“big ears”) or the Shoshone words Ogwa (river) and Pe-on (west), or perhaps it was something else. Oklahoma is a combination of the words ukla (“person”) and huma (“red”) used by the Choctaw to describe Native Americans and Indiana was so named because of the large number of Indian Tribes living there since it means “Land of the Indians.” California, Nevada, Montana and Florida got their names from the Spanish interpretations of the local names. It is believed that the Dutch named territory Rootd Eylandt was later, under English rule, anglicized to Rhode Island and Delaware is thought to come from the French phrase de la werre “of the war.” And, lest we forget it, for the name Hawaii you can choose from its being from the Polynesian Sawaiki (“homeland”) or perhaps from the Polynesian said to have discovered the islands, Hawaii Loa. One thing is for certain, if your state is missing it is most likely derived from some native word!