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47 Comments to "The Origins of State Names."
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rightwingprof
June 4th, 2007 at
8:51 am
“from the Aztec word arizuma”
Uh, no. Aztec (Nahuatl) has no ‘r,’ and barring that, the word is obviously not Nahuatl.
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mathmom
June 4th, 2007 at
9:02 am
“colorado” is Spanish for “colored”, not (necessarily) red
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coz
June 4th, 2007 at
10:43 am
Yeah Colorado does not mean red.
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[deleted]
June 4th, 2007 at
10:57 am
[deleted]
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Dave
June 4th, 2007 at
11:12 am
Just a correction; Iowa, Kansas, the Dakotas and Minnesota use words from the Lakota language. Sioux is the name given to the Lakota by white settlers, who learned it from scouts from other tribes; Sioux is a bit of a derivative of the word for “alien” or someone who speaks another language. The name really stuck, and is still used even by some Lakota, but in their own language, “Lakota” is the term they use when referring to themselves and the language.
A little moderation may be needed on Comment #4.
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DT
June 4th, 2007 at
2:08 pm
Arkansas is a Indian name that means South Wind People…
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Steve
June 4th, 2007 at
2:18 pm
IOWA. “one who puts to sleep.” Yeah it puts its residents to sleep. LoL.
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Ben
June 4th, 2007 at
3:24 pm
Arizona has Latin roots and is easy to figure out: Arid Zone.
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MonkeyBoy
June 4th, 2007 at
3:33 pm
Dakota/Lakota/Nakota are Native American tribes and languages. Yes in all the languages the name does mean “friend” but it is a little disingenuous to say the “North Dakota” name comes from a word for friend without mentioning the tribe or language.
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A Texan in Bavaria
June 4th, 2007 at
3:39 pm
“Roode Eylandt” is Dutch, though “Eylandt” is archaic (”eiland” is the modern spelling) (hat tip http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groote_Eylandt)
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anon
June 4th, 2007 at
3:42 pm
Wouldn’t New York being named after the Duke /of/ York not suggest that it’s actually named after the city in England…?
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MissileToad
June 4th, 2007 at
4:46 pm
A few corrections:
Michigan does not mean ‘great water’, it is a derivative of the Anishnaabe word for ‘turtle’ - Michigay. This is due to ‘turtle’ being a synonymous word for ‘land’, coming from an Anishnaabe legend in which this continent was built upon the back of a turle after the great flood.
Arizona is just as basic as Colorado, Montana, and Nevada… it means ‘arid zone’ in Spanish.
North/South Dakota is somewhat different. Dakota is one of the three tribes generally called Sioux by whites, including also the Lakota and Nakota. A ‘Dakota’ CAN be a friend of a Lakota, but it isn’t the word for friend.
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Don Miller
June 4th, 2007 at
5:02 pm
Idaho was a made up word by a newspaper publisher
He told people it was an indian word for “Gem of the Mountains”. It wasn’t. But it stuck anyway.
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Randal O'Toole
June 4th, 2007 at
5:17 pm
Recent research suggests that Oregon comes from a Native American word for smelt. The word sounded like “ooligan” and the L was changed to an R. See http://duckhenge.uoregon.edu/hparchive/display.php?q=oregon.html
This makes more sense than the other explanation’s of the name’s origin.
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Some Nebraskan
June 4th, 2007 at
5:21 pm
Nebraska does not mean “broad water”. It means “flat water”. It refers to the Platte river.
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Some Rhode Islander
June 4th, 2007 at
5:51 pm
Rhode Island comes from it’s similarity (according to it’s
discoverer) to the Isle of Rhodes - there were no Dutch in the area and certainly no red clay - for real - that’s Georgia, you pokes… -
Another Rhode Islander
June 4th, 2007 at
6:24 pm
I second the remarks above on all three points.
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Anonymous
June 4th, 2007 at
7:27 pm
I thought Luisiana was named after King Louis and his wife Ana.
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Orangeclaw Hammer
June 4th, 2007 at
7:35 pm
#’s 8 & 12
Arizona is definitely not derived from “arid zone” or it’s Spanish cognate, nor from nahuatl, but almost certainly from the O’odham “ali shonak”
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Doug
June 4th, 2007 at
8:33 pm
Idaho comes from the Shoshone word “Ee-da-how” - “The sun comes down the mountains”
Only someone NOT from Idaho would blatantly get that wrong.
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Ross
June 4th, 2007 at
11:10 pm
It’s infamously known that IDAHO was named as a hoax by a US politician who claimed it was Native American for “Gem of the Mountains” but later admitted it was a hoax, but by then it had stuck.
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Dick Licker
June 4th, 2007 at
11:25 pm
Mississippi is an indian word meaning “Land of the Porch Monkey”.
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Hardcase
June 5th, 2007 at
12:24 am
Everyone who was in 4th grade in Idaho up until 1980 or so got brainwashed with the whole Ee-da-how thing. All made up. But it sure made for a good story. Besides, how many people can say that they live in a state whose name is a joke?
And I agree with Some Rhode Islander - I lived in Newport for 5 years and never saw a bit of red clay.
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anonymous
June 5th, 2007 at
12:44 am
just to help quash the Arizona “arid zone” — if a Spaniard were to write on his map that the area is an “arid zone”, it would be written as “zona arida”…(because the word order is not the same as in English…e.g., “casa blanca” for white house).
the California name legend is not clear — one idea is that Balboa wrote “calida fornax” (Latin for “hot furnace”) — this would have been as Balboa was traveling North on his trip up the Pacific coast and through the area of Baja California (Spanish for “Lower California”), which is indeed very hot (like as in “hot as a furnace”).
The story goes on to say that in Spanish, the “calida” was bastardized to “callida” (kai-yee-duh) and “fornax” is pronounced “for-nash” — together “kai-yee-duh-for-nash”…which sounded like “California”, the mythical island inhabited solely by dark-skinned women which had been talked about in Europe at least since the late 15th century.
Of course, this was a natural link since what we now know as Baja California, Mexico was drawn as an island on early 16th century maps. Later Cortez was sent to explore/claim “California” and that is apparently documented — whether it was beleived to be the fabled island…is not clear. Cortez made several documented missions but apparently left the settling of the land to later conquerers…who continued to call it California Alta (Upper California) and California Baja (Lower California).
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zardoz
June 5th, 2007 at
8:00 am
Arkansas is an Osage Indian word for “Land of the Downstream People”
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Skup
June 5th, 2007 at
8:05 am
Alabama was the name of an indian tribe in the southern US.
Supporting material: http://wwwlib.umi.com/bod/fullcite?id=187826
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HoosierHarold
June 5th, 2007 at
10:12 am
Yeah our state settled on Indiana, but the original name of “Land of the Ugliest Girls in the Frontier” didn’t go over well with the then just starting Chamber of Commerce, so it was changed back to ‘Indiana’ mostly for tourist reasons.
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Dave
June 5th, 2007 at
10:37 am
Near the town of Sutton, Surrey, England there is a village called Belmont, it changed its name about 100 years ago from California (to Belmont). This could be the origin of the state name.
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poochner
June 5th, 2007 at
10:42 am
King George II didn’t “chart” the colony of Georgia. He “chartered” it. That is, he didn’t draw a map with it on it, he wrote the document that declared its legal existence as an English colony.
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Kevin
June 5th, 2007 at
10:59 am
They originally considered naming Washington ‘Columbia’ but decided against it so that it wouldn’t be confused with the District of Columbia. Oh the irony.
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Baton Rougean
June 5th, 2007 at
1:44 pm
Half right on Louisiana its a combination of the French King Louis AND Queen Anna
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guero
June 5th, 2007 at
2:23 pm
As usual, Uncle John is full of it. “Missouri” is NOT the Algonquin word for “muddy water.” It means “people with big canoes” & was the name given the Missouri tribe by their enemies, the Fox tribe of Algonquins. The Missouris themselves, who were a branch of the Sioux, called the river Nishodse, which does mean “muddy water.”
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Cydonia
June 5th, 2007 at
8:06 pm
Washington State wasn’t named after George Washington, but is derived from the Tlingit word Oweas-in-tong, which means “first president.”
But I could be wrong.
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Moon
June 5th, 2007 at
9:14 pm
Kansas is the land of “south wind people” and they’re still blowing it out of their south end today!!!
Hahahaha!
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Moon
June 5th, 2007 at
9:20 pm
A Lakota told me that Lakota means “the people” and that Dakota and any other version were just mispronunciations!
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bubba
June 6th, 2007 at
1:48 pm
No, Louisiana was named JUST for King Louis XIV - no Anna was involved…that’s just a myth that has been passed around for years.
Here’s a link to the Louisiana Secretary of State’s website:
http://www.sos.louisiana.gov/around/brief/brief-1.htmLook at the third paragraph, “1682 The French explorer Sieur de La Salle, the first to descend the Mississippi to its mouth, took possession “of the country known as Louisiana,” and named it for the reigning monarch of France, Louis XIV. “
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Dave B
June 7th, 2007 at
5:46 pm
I thought the translation for every state between the east and west coasts was ’summer camp’
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Una Walsh
June 8th, 2007 at
8:45 am
Queen Henrietta Maria Was wife to Charles 1 Not George Maryland eas named after the wife of William 111 daughter of James 11
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Adam
June 8th, 2007 at
3:51 pm
For a country who was so bloodthirsty in killing off the Native Americans, we really do owe them a lot of gratitude for naming our states.
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miguelags
June 10th, 2007 at
1:29 pm
I am spanish and i can say that “colorado” means “red” not coloured (in spanish “coloured” is “coloreado”)
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rebelinmaine
June 10th, 2007 at
10:46 pm
The state name Idaho, actually came from my ex-wife.
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Jessica
June 11th, 2007 at
8:56 am
Actually, Missouri means “man with a big canoe” in the Seneca language. Trust me, I’m from Missouri!
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EEB
July 9th, 2007 at
9:52 am
Arkansas was a big error. The French were traveling with a Native American from Illinois or somewhere like that. They get down here, the French are like, “Who are they?” The out-of-territory Native American is like, “They’re the Arkansa (Down-Stream People).” The French men say, “Okay. Hello, Arkansa!” and the Arkansan Native Americans were like, “Dude, we’re the Quapaw.” But the French were like, “No, you’re savage Arkansa!” And that’s my codensed Arkansas history lesson for today.
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Matt
February 24th, 2008 at
9:51 pm
Oklahoma means “land of the red man.”
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madrone
February 25th, 2008 at
12:57 am
this list is fail.
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steve
March 2nd, 2008 at
1:22 am
About Colorado: The author is right it does “tend” to mean red. The word can mean colorful (as others have stated), not relating specifically red. However, when used without any other context, it does generally imply that the color is red.
Uds gringos se creen muy inteligentes.
And while no one is sure about Arizona; it is not Latin. Pima is a commonly tossed about idea.
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Isabella
May 13th, 2008 at
5:12 pm
Goergia is one of the mag triplets.Alabama and mississippi are the others.if you look at minnesota, iowa,missouri,arkansas, and louisiana, you will see an elf.thats all for now try to look at wisconsin and new york, you will see the elfs (mimal) dogs.
P.S.the elfs names is Mimal.
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