10 States With Unusual Names Explained

A curious word in itself, Massachusetts originated from an Algonquian word meaning "large hill place." The term "Massachusett" was first recorded in 1616 as the name of a village near present-day Boston, and the English added an -s to signify the plural.

The name was applied to the bay, from which the Massachusetts Bay Company, founded in 1629, took its name. With the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, legislators officially adopted the name Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Image: Kaya Arro

Another name with an Algonquian origin, like Massachusetts, Michigan comes from the word mishigama which means "big lake." The state was named after its chief geological feature: that large body of water to its west. After all, Michigan is in direct contact with four of the five Great Lakes.

When the area became a U.S. territory, the name Michigan was adopted as the name of the state. Michigan achieved statehood in 1837.

Image: Aaron Burden

A name most likely derived from the either Spanish (Montaña) or Latin (Montanus) word for mountain, Montana was suggested by Rep. James M. Ashley of Ohio, who was a member of the House Committee on Territories. He recommended it in 1863 for the territory that would become Idaho. He liked the name so much that he recommended it again for a territory being organized in 1864.

The name Montana itself was first given in 1858 to a town in the Pike’s Peak gold region, which was at the time part of Kansas and is today part of Colorado. The town eventually died, though, when the gold ran out, but the name lived on.

Image: Tim Stief

The name Oklahoma was coined in 1866 by Allen Wright, a Choctaw chief and Presbyterian minister who served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. He combined two Choctaw words that, together, mean "Land of the Red People." Eventually, the name was adopted into the Choctaw-Chickasaw Treaty.

Image: Skyler Smith

In 1681, the English king Charles II gave a land grant to William Penn. The charter designated that the colony was to be called Pennsylvania, which was a combination of Penn’s name and the Latin "silva" (spelled "sylva" in the 17th century), meaning "forest." Therefore, Pennsylvania means "Penn’s forest."

William Penn had originally suggested that the land be called New Wales, but since the charter was signed with Pennsylvania permanently inscribed, he declared that the name was in honor of his father.

Image: Lera Kogan

While the names of many states originate from descriptions, the name of Tennessee didn’t have any particular meaning when it was bestowed upon the Volunteer State. This name originally came from a Cherokee town called Tanasqui by the Spanish, and Tinnase by the English. But the Cherokees themselves didn’t associate any literal meaning with the word.

The name was also given to a stream near the town, and as English settlers moved downstream, they carried the name with them. Tennessee first appeared in that spelling as the name of a newly organized county in North Carolina in 1788, and it was eventually proposed and accepted by Congress as a state name in 1796.

Image: Brice Cooper

The name of Wyoming originated from the Algonquian word meche-weami-ing, which meant "at the big flats." It was originally applied to a valley in Pennsylvania and became well-known through Thomas Campbell’s epic 1809 poem "Gertrude of Wyoming," which was about a girl from Pennsylvania.

James Ashley, a member of the House Committee on Territories representing Ohio, suggested the name for a new territory in 1868.

Image: Kellie Klumb

The name Alaska is thought to come from the Aleut word aláxsxaq or aleyska, which translates to "an object to which the sea is directed."

When Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867, the name Alaska was suggested by Senator Charles Sumner under the belief that it meant "great land," when in fact the word was simply what Aleuts used to refer to the mainland.

Image: Rod Long

Whoever thinks Connecticut sounds like a complicated word, should take a look at the Algonquian word from which it originated: Quinnehtukqut, which means "place beside the long tidal river."

An English scribe probably inserted the second, silent "c" in the name into the word to form the more common "connect" section, as we know it today.

Image: Christopher Luther

The name of the state of Idaho has at least two probable origins. On the one hand, it may be derived from the word Idahi, the Kiowa-Apache name for the Comanche, both of whom were known to have been in that area. On the other hand, it might have been fabricated by a mining lobbyist at a time when native-sounding names were popular.

When Colorado was being organized as a territory in 1860, the name Idaho was considered, but Congress chose Colorado instead. The name came up again in 1863 when territories farther north were being organized. Montana was first proposed for the new area, but the U.S. Senate decided to call it Idaho.

Image: Clay Elliot