23. What’s in a Name?

Star-Spangled Stories. Article 23.

What's in a Name?

Where do the names of the 50 American states come from – and what do they tell us about American history?

California from a novel about a legendary island. Texas from a word for friends. Pennsylvania as "Penn's woods". And Idaho? A name that someone may simply have made up. If we removed the borders of the states and left only their names on the map, we could still read several centuries of American history from it.

State names are not just geographical labels. They are small language fossils: some preserve the languages of people who lived there long before the Europeans came, some recall colonization and monarchs, and elsewhere a word from French or Spanish has survived. And sometimes historians are not sure of anything at all.

A map on which six different stories speak

About half of the names of American states have roots in the languages of the native peoples of America or in Hawaiian. Next to them are names linked to the British Crown, Spanish and French explorers, geography and later American history. The following map shows these layers in different colours.

Two important facts stand out from the map. First: the settlement of America did not begin with the arrival of the Europeans. Second: place names travel. An indigenous word could pass into French, from there into English, and finally become the official name of a state.

Voices that were here long before English

Rivers and landscapes were often named by people who had lived there for thousands of years. The Europeans who arrived took over many names, but they wrote them according to their own spelling habits. And when one language took a word through a second or third one, its form sometimes changed beyond recognition.

Mississippi – "big river". The name comes from the Ojibwe word for a mighty river. For European maps it was a practical name for a huge river; later the whole state took it over. But there is no mysterious "father of waters" in the translation, as is sometimes said.

Minnesota – water of a different colour. The Dakota root is usually explained as "cloudy" or "sky-coloured water". The name of the river became the name of the state. We find the same process in many other names: river → area → state.

Missouri – no muddy water. It is often claimed that the name means "muddy water". But linguistic studies link it with a name for people who used dugout wooden canoes. The name of the people passed to the river and then to the state.

Texas – land of friends? The Caddo word that the Spanish wrote as tejas or texas meant friends or allies. Indeed, the state motto of Texas is still Friendship. But it is not a simple Spanish translation: the oldest root is in the languages of the native peoples.

Dakota – friends and allies. Both North Dakota and South Dakota carry the name of people who called themselves Dakota. It is a trace of nations that are still alive, not just a distant historical curiosity.

And two more examples outside the mainland United States. Alaska is a name of Aleut origin that reached English through Russian. Hawaii carries the Hawaiian name Hawaiʻi, linked to Polynesian traditions; its exact ancient etymology is not certain. So names can sometimes recall whole routes of ancient language contact.

Spanish: colours, snow and an island that never existed

Spanish explorers and colonizers left a strong mark especially in the south and west of today's USA. Sometimes they named a place after what they saw, at other times after the church calendar. And once they took their inspiration from an adventure novel.

California: a name borrowed from fantasy

In the Spanish chivalric romance Las sergas de Esplandián, published at the beginning of the 16th century, there is a fantastic island called California. It is ruled by Queen Calafia, and the land is full of riches. The story was well known at exactly the time of the Spanish overseas expeditions. When the explorers reached the Baja California peninsula, according to the most widely accepted explanation, they gave it the name of this imaginary place. And the name of a fictional island became the name of one of the best-known states in the world.

The French, British kings and one "wooded" territory

The French presence in North America can still be seen today, for example in the name Louisiana. This was La Louisiane, a territory named in honour of the French king Louis XIV. Vermont, in turn, comes from French vert and mont, roughly "green mountains".

British names often worked as a political calling card. Georgia recalls King George II, Maryland Queen Henrietta Maria. Virginia was named after Elizabeth I, known as the Virgin Queen. And the two Carolinas refer to the Latin form of the name Charles – Carolus – in connection with the English kings Charles I and Charles II.

The English word New also stands out. New York was named in honour of the Duke of York, New Jersey recalls the island of Jersey, and New Hampshire the English county of Hampshire. The New World was given names from the Old World, as if the colonists had packed a piece of their home map in their luggage along with their clothes.

Pennsylvania: Penn's woods – but which Penn?

William Penn was the founder of the province of Pennsylvania, whose name combines the family name Penn and Latin silva, "forest". An interesting detail: Penn said that the name was meant to honour his father, Admiral William Penn. He was even worried that the name might look like a celebration of himself.

And Washington? It is the only American state named after a President of the United States – the first president, George Washington. Indiana, on the other hand, is not the name of a native people: it is a New Latin name meaning "land of the Indians".

Five names linguists do not agree on

When you find a beautifully exact translation of a state name somewhere, be careful. Old records are often inaccurate, sometimes the original language is not known, and some authors simply helped themselves with their imagination.

Idaho: "gem of the mountains"? We find this poetic etymology in many popular sources. But Idaho State University and the official state handbook both call it mistaken. The name is probably a newly made-up word, and its supposed native meaning was a later legend.

Oregon: a great language detective story. The origin of the name has been discussed for generations. The Oregon Encyclopedia points to an increasingly strong hypothesis of an Algonquian root, but its exact path to today's form is not settled. The theories about oregano or Spanish "big ears" are not well supported.

Rhode Island: a red island, or Greek Rhodes? Dutch rood(e) eylandt, "red island", is often given. But the official educational materials of Rhode Island also mention an older link with the island of Rhodes, recorded by the Italian navigator Verrazzano. So the original naming is more complicated than school overviews usually say.

Arizona: little springs or good oaks? One hypothesis leads to a word from the O'odham language and the local name Arizonac; another to the Basque phrase aritz ona, "good oak". We know the likely options, not a single generally accepted conclusion.

Maine: the mainland, or a French province? The name may have come from English main or mainland, which distinguished the coastal mainland from the small islands, but there is also a French link with the province of Maine. Here, too, there is no complete certainty.

Kentucky, Tennessee and Wisconsin deserve similar caution. The origin of their names is indigenous, but the exact original meaning is disputed or has been lost. This does not mean that scholars "know nothing": we often know exactly how the name spread, we just cannot safely translate its oldest form.

When a foreign language gets onto the map

Three recurring mechanisms can be seen in the names of American states. The first is taking over an original name: Mississippi, Massachusetts or Kansas recall the languages and nations of the native peoples. The second is describing the landscape: Nevada and Vermont are really little geographical pictures. The third is expressing power or cultural memory: Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland and Washington tell us whom the people who named them wanted to honour.

So the map can also be read as a document about who had the right to name places at a given time. New names sometimes covered older indigenous ones, while others survived for centuries and made their way into the English used around the world.

So next time you pronounce Connecticut, Arkansas or Massachusetts and complain that English could be a bit simpler, remember: sometimes a strange spelling is just a trace of a long journey from one language into another.

A small etymological atlas: all 50 states

The following overview gives the most sensible short explanation of each name. The mark ? means that the origin or the exact meaning is disputed. The colour group is only a rough guide – some names have several language layers.

Did you know...?

• The name Arkansas comes, through French, from a name for the Quapaw people. It is written with a final -s, but the official English pronunciation does not sound it – unlike Kansas.

• The phrase New Mexico existed as a local name in the colonial period, long before today's independent Mexico was founded.

• The original Hawaiian form Hawaiʻi uses the ʻokina sign (a glottal stop). Leaving it out in ordinary English spelling shows what can be lost when names are borrowed.

• The American map is a bit like a dictionary. Its vocabulary also records contacts that ordinary political borders cannot show.

Try it: a small language detective task

This is not a memory test. Try to answer with the help of the map and the article.