Five Ridiculous Origins of State Names
For a nation that violently separated from its parent monarchy, we sure did name a lot of our territories after our oppressors.
California: What If We Named Alaska ‘Mordor’?
The 16th-century Spanish explorers who traversed the mountains and deserts of modern-day Mexico were pretty fried by the time they got to the Western-most edge. They figured they’d traveled so freaking far, surely they must have made their way all the way back to the Indian Ocean. So imagine their surprise when they set sail and almost immediately smacked into a bunch more mountains and deserts.
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We now know that they’d crossed the Gulf of California, and landed on the Baja California Peninsula. But to them, this was a brand new island in the “East Indies,” and indeed, people would print maps where California was its own island until at least 1865. They decided to name it not after a distant King or the native people, but after their favorite book. The Adventures of Esplandián was a 15th-century novel that takes place in the mythical East Indies island of California, ruled by the goddess Calafia. Author Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo may have had the kingly word “khalif” in mind, or may have misheard an 11th century epic poem, but either way, California is a made up name some fanboys copied from their favorite franchise.
Texas: A Friendly Little Reeducation Camp
The Caddo Nation used the word táyshaʔ to mean “friend,” in reference to a group of allied tribes in the American Southeast. The heavily armed Spanish tourists who took the land by force turned that into texa, pluralized as texas, and used it to refer to one specific tribe, the Nabedache.
It was largely an informal colloquialism, but it entered the official lexicon when the Spanish decided to force their “friends,” the Nabedache, to convert to Christianity. La Misión de San Francisco de los Texas was built in 1690, and Spanish soldiers riled up the locals so badly that everyone braced for a revolt. Before the indigenous people could actually fight back, the Spanish ushered in a horrible plague that killed a whole bunch of Natives. They shuttered the mission after just three years, but the name “Texas” stuck around for over a century before being adopted as the official name of the territory.
Idaho: A Big Dumb Joke
Prominent physician and gentrifier George M. Willing had an illustrious career meddling in politics in the late 1800s. He was a lobbyist and unelected Congressional delegate who ran with prominent fraudsters, and loved to stir up trouble for exactly no reason. When colonists were trying to come up with a name for a vast expanse of mountains and plains out West, Willing proposed the word “Idaho,” which he was sure meant “gem of the mountains” in the language of the local natives.
It caught on, and people started naming boats and towns after the cool new word. They almost named their entire vast state after it, but word got out that it was all one big goof. They switched it over to “Colorado” just in the nick of time, but 14 years later, when they had another patch of stolen land to name, they remembered “Idaho.” This time, having wormed its way into the local vernacular, it stuck.
Virginia: Not for Lovers
In the 16th century, English explorer Walter Raleigh called dibs on a huge swath of North America. You may remember him as the guy who misplaced the entire Roanoke Colony like it was an AirPods case, but he’s also the guy who coined the name “Virginia.”
It was a smart, if sycophantic move to name his new little country after the monarch who bankrolled his genocidal vacation, Queen Elizabeth I. He could have gone with LizzoLand, or Tudoristan, but Raleigh chose to focus on the Queen’s sexual proclivities — or lack thereof. Elizabeth never married, despite having had an army of suitors, and so was known as “the virgin queen.” As a rule, I don’t remind my bosses how often they do or don’t get laid, but then again I don’t own a territory in The New World, so what do I know?
Interestingly, West Virginia had a chance to lose the moniker when it seceded during the Civil War, but the powers that be stuck with “virgins, but kind of to the left.”
District of Columbia: America’s Waifu
The name “Columbia” does trace back to Christopher Columbus, but not directly. The etymology makes an oddly horny pitstop between “Genocidal Maniac” and “January 6th.” Since Columbus blundered his way into the hemisphere, Europeans personified North and South America as an often busty, always half-naked lady. She was depicted as vaguely Native American, and holding anything from a cornucopia to a severed head. People seemed to be conflicted over whether she represented a land of terrors or a land of plenty, but everyone agreed: this new continent made them horny.
As colonialism and Christianity scorched the countryside, this personification became whiter and more god-like. She merged with a patriotic mythical figure named “Columbia,” conjured by African-America poet Phillis Wheatley in 1775, and became a jingoistic cultural rallying point during the Revolutionary War. By the Civil War, she started appearing on Confederate money, and was later a popular costume among suffragettes. In typical American fashion, a powerful woman put in all the hard work before Uncle Sam came along, decades later, and usurped her role as the primary American flag-draped patriot.