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On August 21, 1959, Hawaii joined the United States as its 50th state. Idaho. The origin of Idaho ’s state name is from a fabricated Native American word. A lobbyist named George M. Willing suggested the name “Idaho” for a new territory created by the U.S. Congress in the early 1860s.
The United States adjusted the border at Punta Paitilla in the Canal Zone, returning a small amount of land to Panama. This was the site for a planned new American embassy, which had to be built on foreign soil. [392] too small to map: May 17, 1932 Porto Rico was renamed Puerto Rico. [393] Caribbean Sea: December 13, 1932
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Before Europeans landed on American shores, the upper stretches of the Alabama River in present-day Alabama used to be the home lands of a Native American tribe called – drum roll, please – the Alabama (Albaamaha in their own tribal language). The river and the state both take their names from the tribe, that's clear enough, but the meaning of the ...
Like Alabama (and, as we'll see, plenty of other state names), the name Alaska comes from the language of the area's indigenous people. The Aleuts (a name given to them by Russian fur traders in the mid 18th century; they used to, and sometimes still do, call themselves the Unangan), natives of the Aleutian Islands, referred to the Alaskan Peninsul...
There are two sides in the argument over the origin of Arizona's name. One side says that the name comes from the Basquearitz onak (“good oak”) and was applied to the territory because the oak trees reminded the Basque settlers in the area of their homeland. The other side says that the name comes from the Spanish Arizonac, which was derived from t...
The first Europeans to arrive in the area of present-day Arkansas were French explorers accompanied by Illinois Indian guides. The Illinois referred to the Ugakhpa people native to the region as the Akansa (“wind people” or “people of the south wind”), which the French adopted and pronounced with an r. They added an s to the end for pluralization, ...
California existed in European literature way before Europeans settled the Western U.S. It wasn't a state filled with vineyards and movie stars, but an island in the West Indies filled with gold and women. The fictional paradise, first mentioned in the early 1500s by Spanish author Garci Ordóñez de Montalvo in his novel Las Sergas de Esplandián, is...
Colorado is a Spanish adjective that means “red.” The early Spanish explorers in the Rocky Mountain region named a river they found the Rio Colorado for the reddish silt that the water carried down from the mountains. When Colorado became a territory in 1861, the Spanish word was used as a name because it was commonly thought that the Rio Colorado ...
The state is named after the Connecticut River, which was named quinnitukqutby the Mohegans who lived in the eastern upper Thames valley. In their Algonquian language, the word means “long river place” or “beside the long tidal river.”
Delaware is named for the Delaware River and Delaware Bay. These, in turn, were named for Sir Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, the first colonial governor of Virginia, who traveled the river in 1610. The title is likely ultimately derived from the Old French de la werre(“of the war” or a warrior).
Six days after Easter in 1513, the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León landed near what is now the city of Saint Augustine. In honor of the holiday and the area's plant life, he named the land Florida for the Spanish phrase for the Easter season, pascua florida(“feast of flowers”). The name is the oldest surviving European place-name in the U.S...
In the early 18thcentury, the British Parliament assigned a committee to investigate the conditions of the country's debtor prisons and didn't like what they found. A group of philanthropists concerned with the plight of debtors proposed the creation of a colony in North America where the “worthy poor” could get back on their feet and be productive...
Jun 29, 2020 · The name “Tennessee” may have come from Creek and Cherokee words, but it is uncertain where the Volunteer State got its name. Spanish explorer Juan Pardo first recorded the name in 1567 as he ...
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- The State of Alabama. Year of statehood: 1819. Denizen name: Alabamian or (less popular) Alabaman. Subscribe and get unlimited access to our online magazine archive.
- The State of Alaska. Year of statehood: 1959. Denizen name: Alaskan. The name Alaska is believed to come from the Aleut word aláxsxaq or aleyska (or any of other numerous spellings), which is translated as “an object to which the sea is directed.”
- The State of Arizona. Year of statehood: 1912. Denizen name: Arizonan. There are two stories behind the name Arizona. The more likely and more widely accepted is that it comes from an O’odham place name that means “place of the small spring,” originally spelled Arizonac and later shortened to take the form of a Spanish word.
- The State of Arkansas. Year of statehood: 1836. Denizen name: Arkansan, though some argue for Arkansawyer. French explorers first noted a village and tribe with the name Arkansa in 1673 — they added the -s to make it plural to indicate members of the tribe.
The history of the United States is one of mixed heritage, manifest destiny and a melting pot patchwork of different identities and languages from around the world. It’s no surprise, then, that the state names of the 50 American states don’t all come from a single source; the contexts of their geography and time shaped what the earliest settlers called the territories they lived in.
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Contents. List of state and territory name etymologies of the United States. The fifty U.S. states, the District of Columbia, the five inhabited U.S. territories, and the U.S. Minor Outlying Islands have taken their names from a wide variety of languages. The names of 24 states derive from indigenous languages of the Americas and one from Hawaiian.
