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  Words

How All 50 States Got Their Names

  [95]BY Matt Soniak
  October 16, 2015
  Thinkstock
  Thinkstock

Alabama

  iStock

  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 name was another matter. Despite a wealth of recorded encounters
  with the tribe – Hernando de Soto was the first to make contact with
  them, followed by other Spanish, French and British explorers and
  settlers (who referred to the tribe, variously, as the Albama,
  Alebamon, Alibama, Alibamou, Alibamon, Alabamu, Allibamou, Alibamo and
  Alibamu) – there are no explanations of the name's meaning in the
  accounts of early explorers, so if the Europeans asked, they don't
  appear to have gotten an answer. An un-bylined article in the July 27,
  1842 edition of the Jacksonville Republican put forth the idea that the
  word meant “here we rest.” Alexander Beaufort Meek, who served as the
  Attorney General of Alabama, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury
  and the President of the First American Chess Congress, popularized
  this theory in his writings throughout the next decade.

  The rub, of course, is that experts in the Alabama language have never
  been able to find any evidence to support that translation. What they
  did find are two words in the Choctaw language (both tribes' languages
  are in the Muskogean language family), alba (“plants” or “weeds”) and
  amo (“to cut” or “to gather”), that together make Albaamo, or “plant
  gatherers.” We also know that the Alabama referred to a member of their
  tribe as an Albaamo, cleared land and practiced agriculture largely
  without tools and by hand and had contact with the neighboring
  Choctaws. Today, the prevailing theory is that the phrase was used by
  the Choctaws to describe their neighbors and the Alabama eventually
  adopted it as their own.

Alaska

  iStock

  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 18^th
  century; they used to, and sometimes still do, call themselves the
  Unangan), natives of the Aleutian Islands, referred to the Alaskan
  Peninsula and the mainland as alaxsxaq (ah-lock-shock), literally, “the
  object toward which the action of the sea is directed.”

Arizona

  iStock

  There are two sides in the argument over the origin of Arizona's name.
  One side says that the name comes from the Basque aritz 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
  the O'odham (the language of the native Pima people) word ali ?ona-g
  (“having a little spring”), which might refer to actual springs or a
  site near rich veins of silver discovered in 1736. For what it's worth,
  official Arizona state historian Marshall Trimble had supported the
  latter explanation but for now favors the former.

Arkansas

  iStock

  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,
  and for some reason it stuck when the word was adopted as the state's
  name. The pronunciation of Arkansas was a matter of debate (Ar-ken-saw
  vs. Ar-kan-zes) until it was officially decided by an act of the state
  legislature in 1881.

California

  iStock

  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 ruled by Queen Califia and “inhabited by black women, without a
  single man among them, [living in] the manner of Amazons.” The island
  is said to be “one of the wildest in the world on account of the bold
  and craggy rocks... everywhere abounds with gold and precious stones”
  and is home to griffins and other mythical beasts.

  While there is some consensus that the area was named for the fictional
  island, scholars have also suggested that the name comes from the
  Catalan words calor (“hot”) and forn (“oven”) or from a Native America
  phrase, kali forno (“high hill”).

Colorado

  iStock

  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 originated in the territory. This was not the case, however.
  Prior to 1921, the Colorado River began where the Green River of Utah
  and the Grand River of Colorado converged outside of Moab, Utah, and
  the United States Geological Survey identified Green River of Wyoming
  as the Colorado's actual headwaters. The Rio Colorado did not actually
  flow through Colorado until 1921, when House Joint Resolution 460 of
  the 66th United States Congress changed the name of the Grand River.

Connecticut

  iStock

  The state is named after the Connecticut River, which was named
  quinnitukqut by 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

  iStock

  Delaware is named for the Delaware River and Delaware Bay. These, in
  turn, were named for Sir Thomas West, 3^rd 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).

Florida

  iStock

  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.

Georgia

  iStock

  In the early 18^th century, 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 citizens again. Their plan ultimately didn't pan out as the
  colony wasn't settled by debtors, but the trustees of the colony still
  wanted to thank King George II for granting their charter, so they
  named the place after him.

  (Bonus: The nation of Georgia is supposedly called so because its
  inhabitants revere St. George and feature his cross on their flag,
  though Georgians refer to themselves as Kartvelebi and their country as
  Sakartvelo.)

Hawaii

  iStock

  No one is certain, so take your pick. The name may come from the
  Proto-Polynesian Sawaiki or "homeland" (some early explorers' accounts
  have the natives calling the place Hawaiki, a compound of hawa,
  "homeland," and ii, "small, active") or from Hawaii Loa, the Polynesian
  who tradition says discovered the islands.

Idaho

  iStock

  The origin of Idaho's name, like a few other names we've already talked
  about, is a mystery. When it was proposed as the name of a new U.S.
  territory, it was explained as a derivation of the Shoshone Indian term
  ee-da-how, meaning "gem of the mountains" or "the sun comes from the
  mountains." It's possible that the word, and its Indian origin, were
  made up by the man who proposed the name, George M. Willing, an
  eccentric industrialist and mining lobbyist (not all historians and
  linguists agree on this, though, and the most common alternate
  explanation is that the name comes from the Apache word idaahe
  ("enemy"), which the Kiowas Indians applied to the Comanches they came
  in contact with when they migrated to southern Colorado). When Congress
  was considering establishing a mining territory in the Rocky Mountains
  in 1860, Willing and B. D. Williams, a delegate from the region,
  championed "Idaho." The request for the name came up in the Senate in
  January 1861 and Senator Joseph Lane of Oregon objected to "Idaho,"
  saying, "I do not believe it is an Indian word. It is a corruption. No
  Indian tribe in this nation has that word, in my opinion... It is a
  corruption certainly, a counterfeit, and ought not to be adopted."
  Lane was roundly ignored, probably because he had the bad luck of
  having been the vice presidential candidate for the pro-slavery
  southern wing of the Democratic Party in the previous year's election.

  After the Senate approved the name, Williams, for some reason, gave
  into curiosity and looked into Lane's claim. He heard from several
  sources that Willing or someone in his group of territorial supporters
  had invented the name "Idaho" and that the word didn't actually mean
  anything. Williams went back to the Senate and requested that the name
  be changed. The Senate agreed and used a name that had been on the
  table before Willing and Williams showed up: "Colorado."

  A year later, Congress set out to establish another mining territory in
  the northwest part of the continent. "Idaho" was again a contender as
  a name. Without Williams there to call shenanigans and with the
  senators who should have remembered the last naming incident just a
  little bit preoccupied with the Civil War, "Idaho" went unchallenged
  and became the name of the territory and the state.

Illinois

  iStock

  "Illinois" is the modern spelling of the early French explorers' name
  for the people they found living in the area, which they spelled in
  endless variations in their records. The Europeans' first meeting with
  the Illinois was in 1674. Father Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit missionary
  and explorer, followed a path to a village and asked the people there
  who they were. According to Marquette's writings, "They replied that
  they were Ilinois...when one speaks the word...it is as if one said, in
  their language, 'the men'." The explorers thought the tribal name to
  signify a grown man in his prime, separate from, and superior to, the
  men of other tribes.

Indiana

  iStock

  The state's name means "Indian Land" or "Land of the Indians," named
  so for the Indian tribes that lived there when white settlers arrived.
  While its meaning might be simple enough, the way it got the name is a
  little more interesting. At the end of the French and Indian War, the
  French were forced out of the Ohio Valley, so a Philadelphia trading
  company moved in to monopolize trade with the Indians in the area. At
  the time, the tribes of the Iroquois had already formed a confederacy
  and conquered territory beyond their home lands, subjugating other
  tribes and treating them as tributaries. In the fall of 1763, members
  of the Shawnee and other tribes who were tributary to the Iroquois
  Confederacy conducted raids on traders from the Philadelphia company
  and stole their goods. The company complained to the chiefs of the
  Iroquois Confederacy and demanded restitution. The chiefs accepted
  responsibility for the behavior of their tributaries, but did not have
  the money to pay off the debt. Instead, when making a boundary treaty
  with the English five years later, the chiefs gave a 5,000-square-mile
  tract of land to the Philadelphia company, which accepted the land as
  payment.

  The land's new owners, in the search for a name, noted a trend in the
  way states and countries in both the Old World and New World were
  named. Bulgaria was the land of the Bulgars, Pennsylvania was the
  woodland of Penn, etc. They decided to honor the people to whom the
  land originally belonged and from whom it had been obtained and named
  it Indiana, land of the Indians. The year the colonies declared their
  independence from Britain, the Indiana land was transferred to a new
  company, who wanted to sell it. Some of the land, though, was within
  the boundaries of Virginia, which claimed that it had jurisdiction over
  the land's settlers and forbade the company from selling it. In 1779,
  the company asked Congress to settle the matter. It made an attempt,
  but, still operating under Articles of Confederation, had no power to
  compel Virginia to do anything. The argument eventually went to the
  United States Supreme Court, but Virginia's government officials,
  strong believers in states' rights, refused to become involved with a
  federal court and ignored the summons to appear. In the meantime,
  Virginia's politicians worked to secure the Eleventh Amendment, which
  protected the states' sovereign immunity from being sued in federal
  court by someone of another state or country (and was proposed in
  response to a Supreme Court case dealing with Georgia's refusal to
  appear to hear a suit against itself, in which the Supreme Court
  decided against Georgia).

  After the amendment was passed and ratified, the company's suit was
  dismissed and it lost its claim to the land, which was absorbed by
  Virginia. The name would come back in 1800, when Congress carved the
  state of Ohio out of the Northwest Territory and gave the name
  "Indiana" to the remaining territorial land and, 16 years later, a new
  state.

Iowa

  iStock

  Iowa's name comes from the Native American tribe that once lived there,
  the Ioway. What the word means depends on who you ask.

  One pioneer in the area wrote in 1868 that "some Indians in search of a
  new home encamped on a high bluff of the Iowa River near its
  mouth...and being much pleased with the location and the country around
  it, in their native dialect exclaimed, 'Iowa, Iowa, Iowa' (beautiful,
  beautiful, beautiful), hence the name Iowa to the river and to those
  Indians." A report from the 1879 General Assembly of Iowa translated
  the word a little differently and claimed it meant "the beautiful
  land." However, members of the Ioway Nation, who today inhabit Kansas,
  Nebraska and Oklahoma, will tell you that Ioway is the French spelling
  of Ayuhwa, a name meaning "sleepy ones" given to the tribe in jest by
  the Dakota Sioux. (The Ioway refer to themselves as Baxoje (bah-ko-jay)
  or "the gray/ashy heads," a name that stems from an incident where
  tribe members were camping in the Iowa River valley and a gust of wind
  blew sand and campfire ashes onto their heads.)

Kansas

  iStock

  Kansas was named after the Kansas River, which was named after the
  Kansa tribe who lived along its banks. Kansa, a Siouan word, is thought
  to be pretty old. How old? Its full and original meaning was lost to
  the tribe before they even met their first white settler. Today, we
  only know that the word has some reference to the wind, possibly
  "people of the wind" or "people of the south wind."

Kentucky

  iStock

  There is no consensus on where Kentucky's name comes from. Among the
  possibilities, though, are various Indians words, all from the
  Iroquoian language group, meaning "meadow," "prairie," "at the
  prairie," "at the field," "land of tomorrow," "river bottom," and
  "the river of blood."

Louisiana

  iStock

  Louisiana comes from the French La Louisiane, or "Land of Louis." It
  was named for Louis XIV, the King of France from 1643 to 1715.
  Exciting, no?

Maine

  iStock

  Maine is another case where no one is quite sure how the name came
  about. Ferdinando Gorges and John Mason, who received a charter for
  land in Maine, were both English Royal Navy veterans, and the name may
  have originated with the sailors differentiating "the mainland" from
  the many islands off the state's coast. Maine's state legislature,
  meanwhile, passed a resolution in 2001 that established Franco-American
  Day and claimed that the state was named after the French province of
  Maine.

Maryland

  iStock

  The English colony of Maryland was named for Queen Henrietta Maria, the
  wife of King Charles I, who granted Maryland's charter. Mariana was
  also proposed as a name, but Maryland's founder, Sir Lord Baltimore,
  believed in the divine right of kings and turned the name down because
  it reminded him of the Spanish Jesuit and historian Juan de Mariana,
  who taught that the will of the people was higher than the law of
  tyrants.

Massachusetts

  iStock

  The Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Bay Colony that
  preceded it were named after the area's indigenous people, the
  Massachusett. The tribe's name translates to "near the great hill,"
  referring to the Blue Hills southwest of Boston. An alternate form of
  the tribe's name, the Moswetuset ("hill shaped like an arrowhead"),
  refers to the Moswetuset Hummock, an arrow-shaped mound in Quincy, MA.

Michigan

  iStock

  The state takes its name from Lake Michigan. Michigan is a French
  derivative of the Ojibwa word misshikama (mish-ih-GAH-muh), which
  translates to "big lake," "large lake" or "large water."

Minnesota

  iStock

  Minnesota is derived from the Dakota tribe's name for the Minnesota
  River, mnisota (mni "water" + sota "cloudy, muddy;" sometimes
  translated to the more poetic "sky-tinted water"). The English
  language doesn't really dig words beginning with mn (you'll find only
  one, mnemonic), so early settlers in the region added some i's and
  produced a mini sound that they wrote as "mine." The city of
  Minneapolis combines mni with the Greek polis, or "city."

Mississippi

  iStock

  The state is named for the Mississippi River. You may have heard that
  mississippi means "the Father of Waters" and you may have heard that
  from no less a source than novelist James Fenimore Cooper or President
  Abraham Lincoln (who wrote in a letter after the Civil War after Union
  victories during the Civil War, "the Father of Waters again goes
  unvexed to the sea"). I hate to pee on Honest Abe's parade, but the
  word, a French derivation of the Ojibwa messipi (alternately misi-sipi
  or misi-ziibi) actually means "big river." It may not sound as
  dramatic as Lincoln's preferred translation, but whatever the meaning,
  the name caught on. As French explorers took the name down the river
  with them to the delta, it was adopted by local Indian tribes and
  replaced their own names, and the earlier Spanish explorers' names, for
  the river.

Missouri

  iStock

  The state and the Missouri River are both named after the Missouri
  people, a southern Siouan tribe that lived along the river. Missouri
  comes from an Illinois language reference to the tribe, ouemessourita,
  which has been translated as "those who have dugout canoes," "wooden
  canoe people" or "he of the big canoe."

Montana

  iStock

  Montana is a variation of the Spanish montaña, or "mountain," a name
  applied because of its numerous mountain ranges (3,510 mountain peaks,
  total). Who first used the name, and when, is unknown.

Nebraska

  iStock

  Nebraska comes from the archaic Otoe Indian words Ñí Brásge (in
  contemporary Otoe, it would be Ñí Bráhge), meaning "flat water." The
  words refer to the Platte River, which flows across the Cornhusker
  State.

Nevada

  iStock

  The state's name is the Spanish word for "snowfall" and refers to the
  Sierra Nevada ("snow-covered mountains") mountain range. The
  non-Nevadan pronunciation of the name "neh-vah-dah" (long A sounds
  like the a in father) differs from the local pronunciation
  "nuh-vae-duh" (short A sounds like the a in alligator) and is said to
  annoy Nevadans endlessly.

New Hampshire

  iStock

  John Mason named the area he received in a land grant after the English
  county of Hampshire, where he had lived for several years as a child.
  Mason invested heavily in the clearing of land and building of houses
  in New Hampshire, but died, in England, before ever venturing to the
  new world to see his property.

New Jersey

  iStock

  New Jersey was named for Jersey, the largest of the British Channel
  Islands, by its founders Sir John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret.
  Carteret was born on Jersey and served as its Lieutenant Governor for
  several years.

New Mexico

  iStock

  New Mexico and the country it used to be part of, Mexico, both take
  their name from Nahuatl Mexihco. The meaning of the word is unclear,
  but there are several hypotheses. It might reference Mextli or
  M?xihtli, an alternate name for Huitzilopochtli, the god of war and
  patron of the Aztecs, and mean “place where M?xihtli lives”. It’s also
  been suggested that the word is a combination of m?tztli (“moon”),
  xictli (“center”) and the suffix -co (“place”) and means “place at the
  center of the moon” (in reference to Lake Texcoco).

New York

  iStock

  Both the state and New York City were named for James Stuart, Duke of
  York and future King James II of England. The old York, a city in
  England, has been around since before the Romans made their way to the
  British Isles and the word York comes from the Romans’ Latin name for
  city, written variously as Eboracum, Eburacum and Eburaci. Tracing the
  name further back is difficult, as the language of the area’s pre-Roman
  indigenous people was never recorded. They are thought to have spoken a
  Celtic language, though, and Eboracum may have been derived from the
  Brythonic Eborakon, which means “place of the yew trees.”

North Carolina

  iStock

  King Charles II of England, who granted a charter to start a colony in
  modern-day North Carolina, named the land in honor of his father,
  Charles I. Carolina comes from Carolus, the Latin form of Charles.

North Dakota

  iStock

  North and South Dakota both take their names from the Dakota, a tribe
  of Siouan people who lived in the region. No detailed etymology of
  Dakota is widely accepted, but the most common explanation is that it
  means “friend” or “ally” in the language of the Sioux.

Ohio

  iStock

  A common translation, “beautiful river,” originates in a French
  traveler’s 1750 account of visiting the region. He referred to the Ohio
  River as “une belle riviere” and gave its local Indian name as Ohio.
  People took his description of the river as a translation of the Indian
  name, though there is no evidence that that was his intention or that
  that is even a correct translation. In fact, no definitive meaning for
  the word is available, though ohio is more likely a Wyandot word
  meaning “large/great” or “the great one,” than “beautiful river.” It
  could also be derived from the Seneca ohi:yo’ (“large creek”).

Oklahoma

  iStock

  Oklahoma is a combination of the Choctaw words ukla (“person”) and humá
  (“red”). The word was used by the Choctaw to describe Native Americans,
  “red persons.” Allen Wright, chief of the Choctaw Nation from 1866 to
  1870, suggested the name in 1866 during treaty negotiations with the
  federal government over the use of the Indian Territory. When the
  Indian Territory was whittled down to what is now Oklahoma, the new
  territory took its name from the Choctaw word.

Oregon

  iStock

  The origin of Oregon may be the most hotly debated of the state names.
  Here’s a few of the competing explanations (and I may have even missed
  a few):

  - Derived from the French ouragan (“hurricane”) and the state named so
  because French explorers called the Columbia River le fleuve aux
  ouragans (“Hurricane River”) due to the strong winds in the Columbia
  Gorge.

  - Derived from oolighan, a Chinook name for the eulachon (Thaleichthys
  pacificus), a smelt found along the Pacific coast and prized as a
  source of food for Native Americans in the area.

  - Derived from the Spanish orejón (“big ears”), which early Spanish
  explorers reportedly used to refer to local natives.

  - Derived from Ouragon, a word used by Major Robert Rogers in a 1765
  petition asking the British government to finance and supply an
  overland search for the Northwest Passage. As to where Rogers got the
  word, it could have come from an error on a French-made map from the
  early 1700s, where the Ouisiconsink (“Wisconsin River”) is misspelled
  “Ouaricon-sint,” and broken so “Ouaricon” sits on a line by itself or
  it might have been derived from the Algonquian wauregan or olighin,
  which both mean “good and beautiful” (and were both used in reference
  to the Ohio River at the time).

  - Derived from the Shoshone words Ogwa (river) and Pe-On (west) and
  picked up from the Sioux, who referred to the Columbia as the “River of
  the West,” by American explorer Jonathan Carver.

Pennsylvania

  iStock

  Named in honor of Admiral William Penn. The land was granted to Penn’s
  son, William Penn, to pay off a debt owed by the crown to the senior
  Penn. The name is made up of Penn + sylva (“woods” ) + nia (a noun
  suffix) to get “Penn's Woodland.” The younger Penn was embarrassed by
  the name and feared that people would think he had named the colony
  after himself, but King Charles would not rename the land.

Rhode Island

  iStock

  First used in a letter by Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, in
  which he compares an island near the mouth of Narragansett Bay (a bay
  on the north side of Rhode Island Sound) to the island of Rhodes in the
  Mediterranean. The explanation preferred by the state government is
  that Dutch explorer Adrian Block named the area Roodt Eylandt (“red
  island”) in reference to the red clay that lined the shore and the name
  was later anglicized under British rule.

South Carolina

  iStock

  See North Carolina above.

South Dakota

  iStock

  North and South Dakota both take their names from the Dakota, a tribe
  of Siouan people who lived in the region. No detailed etymology of
  Dakota is widely accepted, but the most common explanation is that it
  means “friend” or “ally” in the language of the Sioux.

Tennessee

  iStock

  While traveling inland from South Carolina in 1567, Spanish explorer
  Juan Pardo passed through a Native American village in modern-day
  Tennessee named Tanasqui. Almost two centuries later, British traders
  came upon a Cherokee village called Tanasi (in present-day Monroe
  County, Tennessee). No one knows whether Tanasi and Tanasqui were
  actually the same village, though it is known that Tanasi was located
  on the Little Tennessee River and recent research suggests that
  Tanasqui was close to the confluence of the [96]Pigeon River and the
  French Broad River (near modern-day Newport). Tennessee could have come
  from either one of these village names, but the meanings of both words
  have since been lost.

Texas

  iStock

  Texas comes from teysha (sometimes spelled tejas, tayshas, texias,
  thecas, techan, teysas, or techas), a word widely used by the natives
  of the eastern Texas region before the arrival of the Spanish. The
  tribes had various spellings and interpretations of the word, but the
  usual meaning was “friends” or “allies.” Some tribes, like the Hasinais
  and the Caddo, used it as a greeting, “hello, friend.” This is the
  usage that Spanish explorers picked up and used to greet friendly
  tribes throughout Texas and Oklahoma. The explorers also applied the
  word as a name for the Caddo people and the area around their East
  Texas settlement.

Utah

  iStock

  Derived from the name of the native tribe known as the Nuutsiu or Utes
  (which itself may come from the Apache yudah, yiuta or yuttahih,
  meaning “they who are higher up”), whom the Spanish first encountered
  in modern-day Utah in the late 1500s. In the tribe’s language, ute
  means “Land of the Sun.” (The tribe referred to themselves as the
  “Nuciu” or “Noochew,” which simply means “The People.”)

Vermont

  iStock

  Derived from the French words vert (“green”) and mont (“mountain”).
  Samuel Peters claimed that he christened the land with that name in
  1763 while standing on top of a mountain, saying, “The new name is
  Vert-Mont, in token that her mountains and hills shall be ever green
  and shall never die." Most historians would disagree, as would Thomas
  Young, the Pennsylvania statesman who suggested that his state’s
  constitution be used as the basis for Vermont's and is generally
  credited with suggesting the name to maintain the memory of the Green
  Mountain Boys, the militia organization formed to resist New York’s
  attempted take-over of the area.

Virginia

  iStock

  Named for Queen Elizabeth I of England (known as the Virgin Queen), who
  granted Walter Raleigh the charter to form a colony north of Spanish
  Florida.

Washington

  iStock

  Named in honor of the first president of the United States, George
  Washington. In the eastern US, the state is referred to as Washington
  State or the state of Washington to distinguish it from the District of
  Columbia, which they usually just call “Washington”, "D.C." or, if
  they're very local, "the District." Washingtonians and other Pacific
  Northwesterners simply call the state “Washington” and refer to the
  national capital as “Washington, D.C.” or just “D.C.”

West Virginia

  iStock

  West Virginia, formed from 39 Virginia counties whose residents voted
  to form a new state rather than join the Confederacy, was named after
  the same queen as the state it split from, though the new state was
  originally to be called Kanawha.

Wisconsin

  iStock

  Derived from Meskousing, the name applied to the Wisconsin River by the
  Algonquian-speaking tribes in the region. The French explorer Jacques
  Marquette recorded the name in 1673, and the word was eventually
  corrupted into Ouisconsin, anglicized to its modern form during the
  early 19th century, and its current spelling made official by the
  territorial legislature in 1845. Modern linguists had been unable to
  find any word in an Algonquian language similar to the one Marquette
  recorded, and now believe that the tribes borrowed the name from the
  Miami meskonsing, or “it lies red,” a reference to the reddish
  sandstone of the Wisconsin Dells.

Wyoming

  iStock

  Derived from the Delaware (Lenape) Indian word mecheweami-ing (“at/on
  the big plains”), which the tribe used to refer their home region in
  Pennsylvania (which was eventually named the Wyoming Valley
  [Wilkes-Barre represent!]). Other names considered for the new
  territory were Cheyenne, Shoshoni, Arapaho, Sioux, Platte, Big Horn,
  Yellowstone and Sweetwater, but Wyoming was chosen because it was
  already in common use by the territory’s settlers.

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  Live Smarter

Amazon Customers Are Swearing by a $102 Mattress

  [101]BY Shaunacy Ferro
  June 8, 2018
  (Updated: July 14, 2020)
  Linenspa
  Linenspa

  Before you go out and spend hundreds—if not thousands—of dollars on a
  new mattress, you may want to turn to Amazon. According to
  [102]Esquire, one of the most comfortable mattresses on the market
  isn’t from Tempur-Pedic, Casper, or IKEA. It’s a budget mattress you
  [103]can buy on Amazon for as little as $102.

  [104]Linenspa's 8-inch memory foam and innerspring hybrid mattress has
  more than 24,000 customer reviews on Amazon, and 72 percent of those
  buyers gave it five stars. The springs are topped by memory foam and a
  quilted top layer that make it, according to one [105]customer, a
  “happy medium of both firm and plush.”
  Linenspa

  Perhaps because of its cheap price point, many people write that they
  first purchased it for their children or their guest room, only to find
  that it far exceeded their comfort expectations. One [106]reviewer who
  bought it for a guest room wrote that “it is honestly more comfortable
  than the expensive mattress we bought for our room.” Pretty impressive
  for a bed that costs less than some sheet sets.

  Getting a [107]good night's sleep is [108]vital for your health and
  happiness, so do yourself a favor and make sure your snooze is as
  comfortable as possible.

  The mattress starts at $102 for a twin and goes up to $200 for a king.
  Check it out [109]on Amazon.

  [h/t [110]Esquire]

  This article contains affiliate links to products selected by our
  editors. Mental Floss may receive a commission for purchases made
  through these links.

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Seniors in a North Carolina Assisted Living Facility Are Looking for Pen Pals

  [116]BY Jake Rossen
  July 10, 2020
  Seniors in nursing homes are hoping to develop new friendships with pen
  pals.
  Seniors in nursing homes are hoping to develop new friendships with pen
  pals.
  MichaelShivers/iStock via Getty Images

  Although [117]coronavirus still holds many mysteries for the
  researchers working to understand it, one thing is certain: Older
  populations, particularly those in group living facilities, are at high
  risk of serious complications. Assisted living facilities around the
  country have largely shied away from allowing visitors, which means
  residents have little contact with anyone beyond staff.

  Victorian Senior Care in North Carolina is looking to change that the
  old-fashioned way. They’re soliciting pen pals for their residents.

  IFRAME:
  [118]https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.f
  acebook.com%2FVictorianSeniorCare%2Fposts%2F3377452372273674&width=500

  The facility, which has several locations throughout the state, has set
  up a program for residents looking to correspond with someone. Each
  person has a photo profile listing their name and interests. Enjoy
  video games? Then you might like exchanging letters with Robert at The
  Living Center of Concord. Know about farming and heavy farm equipment?
  Mr. Tom at The Village of Kingston is your man. Don’t mind an old
  rascal? Check out Leon at Montgomery Village, who likes “shag dancing”
  and “loves girls.”

  You can find dozens more seniors who have a lot of life experience to
  share on the Victorian Care Center’s pen pal [119]page. The program is
  already a success, with over 15,000 letters [120]received to date. One
  location is even at letter capacity, as all the seniors looking for a
  new friend at their Phoenix Assisted Care location have a full dance
  card.

  Other care facilities throughout the country are also hoping to match
  residents with pen pals. Ridgecrest Healthcare and Rehabilitation
  Center in Forney, Texas, has resident profiles on their Facebook page:

  IFRAME:
  [121]https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.f
  acebook.com%2Fridgecresthealthcareandrehabilitationcenter%2Fposts%2F149
  2720137578833&width=500

  None of these facilities are offering email addresses, which means
  you’ll have to correspond like [122]pen pals did for centuries—with pen
  and paper.

  [h/t [123]Victorian Senior Care]

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