A gazetteer of American place-names
Chicago is a wild onion. Baton Rouge is a blood-stained pole. Atlanta is a railroad company. Search 96 American cities and find out exactly where the name came from — and who argued about it.
Companion record
Some American places were built by Black Americans and then burned, seized, flooded or paved over.
See where they were, and what sits on them now96 entries
New Mexico · est. 1706
“White oak (albus quercus) — or 'land of the cork oak'”
Founded in 1706 and named for the Viceroy of New Spain, the Duke of Alburquerque. The Spanish town behind the ducal title is usually explained from Latin albus quercus, 'white oak.' The first r was quietly dropped in the 19th century, reportedly by a railroad stationmaster tidying up a sign.
Spanish (from Latin/Arabic)
Texas · est. 1887
“Yellow”
Amarillo Creek ran through subsoil of yellow clay, edged in season with yellow wildflowers. The first town promoter leaned all the way in and had the company houses painted yellow. Locals softened the Spanish pronunciation to 'am-uh-RIL-oh,' and briefly the town was spelled Oneida before the yellow won.
Castilian Spanish
Alaska · est. 1914
“A place where vessels anchor”
The tent city that sprang up in 1914 for the Alaska Railroad was labeled simply 'Anchorage' on shipping manifests because that is what the spot was: the anchorage at Ship Creek. Residents voted for the name Alaska City instead; the federal government ignored them and kept the shipping label.
English
Maryland · est. 1649
“Anne's city”
Puritan refugees from Virginia founded Providence in 1649. It became Anne Arundel's Towne, then in 1694 Annapolis, honoring Princess Anne with the Greek polis suffix. The name blends a Hebrew personal name with a Greek noun to flatter an English royal.
Hebrew + Ancient Greek
Colorado · est. 1879
“The aspen tree”
The silver camp was called Ute City for its first two years. In 1880 the residents voted to rename it for the trembling aspen groves that blanket the valley — a rare case of a mining town choosing scenery over conquest, and a name that paid off a century later when the trees became the tourist attraction.
English
Georgia · est. 1847
“Feminine coinage from 'Atlantic'”
The town began as Terminus — the literal end of the railroad line — then became Marthasville for the governor's daughter. In 1847 a railroad engineer proposed 'Atlantica-Pacifica,' shortened to Atlanta, as a feminine form of the Western and Atlantic Railroad's name. The city is named after a corporation, and it kept the name even after the railroad faded.
Coined English
Maryland · est. 1729
“Town of the big house (Baile an Ti Mhoir)”
The Calvert family held the Irish title Baron Baltimore, taken from a village in County Cork whose Gaelic name, Baile an Ti Mhoir, means 'town of the big house.' Maryland was the Calverts' proprietary colony, and its greatest port carries their title.
Irish Gaelic
Louisiana · est. 1699
“Red stick”
In 1699 the French explorer d'Iberville sailed up the Mississippi and noted a reddened cypress pole hung with fish and bear carcasses, marking the hunting boundary between the Houma and Bayogoula peoples. He wrote it down as 'le baton rouge' — the red stick — and the descriptive note became the capital's name.
French
Montana · est. 1882
“Surname”
Another railroad namesake: the Northern Pacific laid out the town in 1882 and honored its own president. It grew so fast that it was nicknamed the Magic City, a phrase applied to half a dozen railroad boomtowns in the same decade.
English surname
Alabama · est. 1871
“Homestead of Beorma's people”
Founded in 1871 where coal, iron ore and limestone all met, the town was named for England's industrial capital as a deliberate advertisement of ambition. Americans say the final -ham; the English original swallows it. The Old English root names the settlement of a chieftain called Beorma.
Old English
North Dakota · est. 1872
“Surname; 'boundary marker of Bishop's district'”
The Northern Pacific Railway renamed Edwinton in 1873 in a bald attempt to attract German investment capital and German settlers to the Dakota plains. The flattery aimed at the Iron Chancellor was purely commercial, and it worked well enough that the name survived into statehood as a capital.
German
Idaho · est. 1863
“Wooded”
French-Canadian trappers crossing the sagebrush plain caught sight of the river's cottonwood gallery and reportedly cried 'les bois!' — the woods. The river became the Boise, and the fort and city followed. Locals insist on the -see ending; the -zee pronunciation marks an outsider instantly.
French
Massachusetts · est. 1630
“Saint Botolph's stone”
Puritan colonists renamed the Shawmut peninsula after Boston in Lincolnshire, the town many of them had left. That English name is itself a contraction of 'Botolph's Stone,' marking a boundary stone or church associated with the 7th-century Saxon saint Botolph, patron of travelers.
Old English
New York · est. 1789
“Disputed: 'beautiful river' (beau fleuve) or the animal”
Bison were not native to western New York in any numbers, which makes the animal explanation awkward. The popular alternative is that French speakers called the waterway beau fleuve — 'beautiful river' — and English ears reshaped it. Neither theory has clean documentary support, and the debate has run for two centuries.
Contested (French or English)
Vermont · est. 1763
“Settlement of Beornwulf's people”
The charter of 1763 does not say. Two candidates persist: Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington, in line with New Hampshire governor Benning Wentworth's habit of flattering English nobles, or the Burling family of New York who held land nearby. The English original names an Anglo-Saxon chieftain's people.
English
Florida · est. 1962
“Place of cane / reed bed”
Spanish charts from the 1560s label the headland Cabo Canaveral, from canaveral, a place thick with cane or reeds. It is one of the oldest surviving European place-names in the United States. In 1963 it was renamed Cape Kennedy; Florida reversed the change in 1973 after ten years of public objection.
Castilian Spanish
Nevada · est. 1858
“Son of Carr”
John C. Fremont named the river for his scout Christopher 'Kit' Carson in 1843, and the trading post founded on it in 1858 took the river's name. Carson himself, who could not read or write, never lived there.
English surname
South Carolina · est. 1670
“Charles's town”
Founded in 1670 as Charles Town for the restored Stuart king who had granted the Carolina charter. After independence the town corporation formally contracted the name to Charleston in 1783, quietly compressing a royal tribute into something that no longer sounded like one.
English
North Carolina · est. 1768
“Free man (feminine of Charles)”
Named in 1768 for the young German-born queen consort of George III — which is why the surrounding county is Mecklenburg, after her home duchy. Seven years later the town's residents were among the first to declare independence, making Charlotte a city named for a queen it promptly repudiated.
French/German
Wyoming · est. 1867
“Speakers of a foreign tongue / red talkers”
The railroad town took the name of the Cheyenne nation — but that name is not what the Cheyenne call themselves. It is a Dakota Sioux exonym, Sahiyena, roughly 'people of an alien speech.' The Cheyenne name for themselves is Tsitsistas.
Dakota Sioux (exonym)
Illinois · est. 1833
“Wild leek place / striped skunk plant”
The name descends from the Miami-Illinois word shikaakwa, the name for a pungent wild allium — a ramp or wild leek — that grew thick in the marshes at the mouth of the river. French explorers Jolliet and Marquette recorded the portage as 'Checagou' in 1673. The plant and the striped skunk shared a root in the language because both were described by their sharp smell, which is why the city is sometimes teased as 'the place that stinks of onions.'
Miami-Illinois (Algonquian)
Ohio · est. 1788
“Curly-haired (Latin cincinnus)”
The town was platted as Losantiville — a manufactured word meaning 'the town opposite the mouth of the Licking.' Governor Arthur St. Clair found this ridiculous and renamed it in 1790 for the Society of the Cincinnati, the veterans' order that took its name from Cincinnatus, the Roman who left his plow to save Rome and then went home again.
Latin
Ohio · est. 1796
“Cliff land”
Moses Cleaveland laid out the town in 1796, spelled with an a. A local newspaper is traditionally blamed for dropping the letter in the 1830s so the masthead would fit. The English root, from Old English clif-land, describes hilly ground — appropriate for a settlement above a river gorge.
English
South Carolina · est. 1786
“Land of Columbus”
The South Carolina senate voted in 1786 between Columbia and Washington for its new inland capital. Columbia won by seven votes. The name was the fashionable poetic feminine personification of the young republic, coined in the 1730s and everywhere in revolutionary verse.
Latin
Ohio · est. 1812
“Dove (Latin columba)”
Ohio legislators created a capital on empty ground opposite Franklinton in 1812 and named it for Columbus during a wave of post-revolutionary enthusiasm for the explorer as a non-British founding figure. The Latin surname simply means 'dove.'
Latin
New Hampshire · est. 1725
“Harmony, agreement”
The town spent decades in a vicious land fight between Massachusetts and New Hampshire claimants. When the dispute finally settled in 1765, the town was renamed Concord — 'harmony' — as a deliberate declaration that the argument was over. It had been Rumford, and before that Penacook.
Latin via French
Texas · est. 1841
“Meadow dwelling (Scots Gaelic dail)”
John Neely Bryan said only that he named it 'for my friend Dallas' and never specified which one. The leading candidate is George Mifflin Dallas, Polk's vice president and a champion of Texas annexation. Other contenders include his brother Commodore Alexander Dallas and a neighbor of Bryan's named Joseph Dallas.
Scottish surname
Colorado · est. 1858
“Surname; ultimately 'from Denver, Norfolk' — the Danes' crossing”
Gold-rush speculator William Larimer named his claim after James Denver, hoping to flatter the territorial governor into making it a county seat. The flattery was wasted: Denver had already resigned. The English place-name behind the surname means 'ford or passage of the Danes.'
English
Iowa · est. 1843
“Disputed: 'of the monks' or 'the road' (mooyiinkweena)”
French traders recorded the river as Riviere des Moines, which reads as 'river of the monks' and was long explained by a Trappist settlement downstream. Linguists now trace it instead to the Miami-Illinois word mooyiinkweena, a decidedly unflattering term one group used for another — usually rendered as 'the dung-faces.' The polite French spelling papered over an insult.
French / Miami-Illinois
Michigan · est. 1701
“The strait”
Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac built Fort Pontchartrain du Detroit in 1701 on le detroit — literally 'the strait,' the narrows of the river. French speakers called the whole region simply 'the strait,' and the descriptor outlived the fort's ceremonial name entirely.
French
Texas · est. 1659
“The pass of the north”
Juan de Onate crossed the Rio Grande here in 1598 and called it El Paso del Norte — the northern pass — because the river cuts a genuine gap between the Franklin and Juarez mountain ranges. For three centuries it was the only practical route north into New Mexico.
Castilian Spanish
Oregon · est. 1846
“Well-born (eugenes)”
Eugene Skinner built a cabin on a butte in 1846; the settlement was Skinner's Mudhole before residents settled on his considerably more dignified first name. The Greek root eugenes means 'well-born' — an unintended joke for a town that started as a mudhole.
Ancient Greek
North Dakota · est. 1871
“Surname”
The Northern Pacific Railway named its Red River crossing for William Fargo — a director of the railroad and co-founder of the express company. It was called Centralia for a matter of months before the railroad's naming committee had its way.
English surname
Arizona · est. 1876
“A pole for a flag”
On July 4, 1876 — the nation's centennial — a party of scouts from Boston stripped the branches off a tall ponderosa pine and raised the American flag on it. The bare trunk stayed standing as a landmark on the wagon road, and travelers began calling the spot 'the flag staff.'
English
California · est. 1872
“Ash tree”
Spanish-speaking Californians called the river the Rio de los Fresnos for the ash trees on its banks. The county took the name in 1856, and the Central Pacific station that became the city followed in 1872. The ash tree still appears on the county seal.
Castilian Spanish
Wisconsin · est. 1634
“Green bay (La Baye Verte)”
French traders called it La Baye Verte because the algae-rich water turns visibly green earlier in the season than the surrounding lake. The English translated it directly. It is the oldest permanent European settlement in Wisconsin, dating to Jean Nicolet's landing in 1634.
French, translated
Connecticut · est. 1637
“The stag's ford / deer crossing”
Named by settler Samuel Stone for Hertford in England, where he was born. The Old English original, heorot-ford, means the river crossing used by harts — male deer. The spelling drifted to match the pronunciation.
Old English
Pennsylvania · est. 1903
“Surname, from Swiss-German Hirschi ('stag')”
Milton Hershey built an entire town around his chocolate factory in 1903 — houses, a trolley, a bank, a school for orphans. The post office was called Derry Church until residents voted for Hershey in 1906. It is one of the purest American company towns, right down to street lamps shaped like foil-wrapped kisses.
German/Swiss surname
Hawaii · est. 1795
“Sheltered harbor / calm port”
Hono means harbor or bay; lulu means calm or sheltered. The name describes exactly what made the place matter: a reef-protected deep-water anchorage, rare in the Pacific, that turned a fishing village into the crossroads of the whaling and sandalwood trades.
Hawaiian
Texas · est. 1836
“Hugh's town”
The Allen brothers bought swampy land on Buffalo Bayou weeks after the Battle of San Jacinto and named their speculative town for the victorious general, then running for president of the new republic. It worked — Houston briefly became the capital. The Scottish surname behind it means 'Hugh's settlement.'
Scottish English
Indiana · est. 1821
“City of Indiana”
Jeremiah Sullivan bolted the Greek polis onto 'Indiana' in 1821. Critics called it a monstrosity — one legislator said it sounded like a disease. Indiana itself is a Latinate coinage meaning 'land of the Indians,' a name applied to the territory long before the state existed.
English + Ancient Greek
Mississippi · est. 1821
“Son of Jack”
Mississippi built a capital at Le Fleur's Bluff in 1821 and named it for Andrew Jackson, then celebrated for the victory at New Orleans and not yet president. The city was laid out on a checkerboard plan that Thomas Jefferson had proposed, with alternating blocks left as green space.
English surname
Alaska · est. 1881
“Surname”
The camp was first called Harrisburg for Richard Harris, then Rockwell for a naval officer, before miners voted in 1881 to name it after the other half of the prospecting partnership, Joe Juneau. Three names in two years, decided by a show of hands in a mining camp.
French-Canadian surname
Michigan · est. 1829
“Boiling water / where the water boils”
The Potawatomi term is usually rendered 'boiling water,' describing either the river's rapids or the mirage-like shimmer over it. A local legend says it refers to a footrace a chief demanded of a suitor — run to the river and back before the pot boils. The linguistic reading is less romantic and better supported.
Potawatomi
Missouri · est. 1838
“People of the south wind”
The Kansas River carried the name of the Kansa or Kaw nation, generally translated 'people of the south wind.' The town at the confluence with the Missouri became the City of Kansas, then Kansas City — and it sits in Missouri, which endlessly confuses visitors flying into a Missouri airport named for a different state's river.
Siouan (Kansa)
Nevada · est. 1905
“The meadows”
In 1829 the Mexican scout Rafael Rivera came upon artesian springs feeding improbable green grass in the middle of the Mojave and recorded them as Las Vegas — 'the meadows.' The most artificial city in America is named for a natural wetland, and the springs it was named for ran dry in the 1960s.
Castilian Spanish
Nebraska · est. 1856
“Colony by the pool (Lindum Colonia)”
The village of Lancaster was renamed in 1867 by legislators from the south of the state — who were hoping that honoring the recently assassinated president would so offend pro-Confederate northern legislators that they would block the capital move. The tactic backfired, and Lincoln got the capital. The English city name comes from Roman Lindum Colonia, 'the colony at the pool.'
Latin + Brythonic
Arkansas · est. 1821
“The little rock (la petite roche)”
In 1722 the French explorer Bernard de la Harpe noted a small rock outcropping on the south bank of the Arkansas — la petite roche — the first stone visible to boats coming up from the flat delta. It marked the crossing point. A larger bluff two miles upstream became, inevitably, Big Rock.
French, translated
California · est. 1781
“The Angels”
Spanish settlers established El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles in 1781, naming it for a Marian title connected to the Porziuncola chapel in Assisi. The mouthful was clipped over generations to Los Angeles, then to L.A. Early Anglo residents pronounced the g hard, and the softened modern pronunciation was only settled by civic decree in the 20th century.
Castilian Spanish
Kentucky · est. 1778
“Louis's town”
George Rogers Clark's settlement at the Falls of the Ohio was named in 1780 to thank Louis XVI for French support in the Revolution. Kentucky's pronunciation has ground the French name down to something close to 'LOO-uh-vul,' and residents treat any crisper attempt as an accusation.
French
Tennessee · est. 1819
“Enduring and beautiful (from Men-nefer)”
Andrew Jackson and his partners named their bluff-top river town after the capital of ancient Egypt, drawing an explicit parallel between the Mississippi and the Nile. The Egyptian original, Men-nefer, meant 'enduring and beautiful.' The nearby town of Cairo, Illinois, doubles down on the same conceit.
Ancient Greek / Egyptian
Florida · est. 1896
“Big water”
The Miami River took its name from Lake Mayaimi — today's Lake Okeechobee — and the people who lived on its shores. In their language the word meant simply 'big water.' The name has no connection to the unrelated Miami tribe of Ohio and Indiana, a coincidence that has confused schoolchildren for a century.
Mayaimi (Lake Okeechobee peoples)
Wisconsin · est. 1846
“Good land / gathering place by the water”
Recorded in dozens of spellings — Milwacky, Milwaukie, Melleoke — the name descends from an Algonquian term generally read as 'good land' or 'pleasant land.' The modern spelling was fixed by a newspaper compositor's preference more than by any linguistic authority.
Algonquian (Potawatomi/Ojibwe)
Minnesota · est. 1856
“Water city”
A schoolteacher named Charles Hoag proposed welding the Dakota word mni ('water') to the Greek polis ('city'). The hybrid beat out the rival suggestion of 'All Saints.' It is one of the few American place-names deliberately manufactured from two unrelated languages.
Dakota + Ancient Greek
Vermont · est. 1787
“Disputed — possibly 'mount of the pilgrim' or 'bare hill'”
Chartered in 1781 during the height of American gratitude toward France, one of a wave of French place-names adopted after the Revolution. It is the smallest state capital in the country by population, and the only one without a McDonald's. The French original's etymology remains contested even in France.
French / Occitan
Tennessee · est. 1779
“Nash's town”
Settlers who arrived at the Cumberland bluffs in 1779 named their fort for Francis Nash, a North Carolina brigadier general killed two years earlier at the Battle of Germantown. The -ville suffix, imported from French, was a fashionable American ending in the revolutionary decades.
English
Louisiana · est. 1718
“New Orleans, after the French duchy”
Bienville founded La Nouvelle-Orleans in 1718 and flattered the Regent of France, Philippe d'Orleans, who was ruling for the child king Louis XV. The French city of Orleans traces back to Roman Aurelianum, named for the emperor Aurelian.
French
New York · est. 1624
“The Duke of York's new holding”
The Dutch founded New Amsterdam on Manhattan in 1624. When an English fleet took the colony without a fight in 1664, it was handed to Charles II's brother James, Duke of York and Albany, and promptly renamed in his honor. York itself is an English city whose name grinds down from Latin Eboracum through Old English Eoforwic ('boar settlement') and Old Norse Jorvik.
English
Washington · est. 1850
“Of Mount Olympus”
A settler suggested the town take the name of the mountains on the horizon, which a British captain had christened Mount Olympus in 1788 because the peak looked like a fit dwelling for gods. The name traveled from Greek myth to a British sailor to a Puget Sound village in two centuries.
Ancient Greek
Nebraska · est. 1854
“Those going against the current / upstream people”
The Omaha call themselves Umonhon, understood as 'those who go against the current' — a reference to their migration up the Missouri while a related group went downstream and became the Quapaw, 'the downstream people.' The city on the river kept the upstream name.
Siouan (Omaha-Ponca)
Wisconsin · est. 1853
“Claw / brave one”
Residents chose between Athens and Oshkosh in an 1840 vote and picked the Menominee leader, whose name means 'his claw' or 'brave.' Chief Oshkosh reportedly attended the naming celebration. The name later circled the globe on a brand of children's overalls.
Menominee
Florida · est. 1559
“Hair people / long-haired people”
Spanish colonists in 1559 recorded the local people as Panzacola, from a Choctaw compound generally read as 'hair people' — a reference to how they wore their hair long. The 1559 settlement was destroyed by a hurricane weeks after landing, making Pensacola America's first and briefest European city.
Muskogean (Choctaw)
Illinois · est. 1691
“Comes from a dream / carries a pack on his back”
The Peoria were one of the tribes of the Illinois Confederation; their name is usually traced to a word about dreams or spiritual vision. The town became American shorthand for the ordinary heartland — 'will it play in Peoria?' — a phrase from vaudeville booking that outlived the circuit entirely.
Miami-Illinois
Pennsylvania · est. 1682
“Brotherly love (philos + adelphos)”
William Penn, a Quaker seeking a refuge of religious tolerance, chose a Greek compound meaning 'brotherly love.' He was pointing at the Book of Revelation, where Philadelphia is the one church that receives no rebuke. The choice was a mission statement: a city planned on a grid, open to all faiths, with no city walls.
Ancient Greek
Arizona · est. 1868
“Phoenix, the self-resurrecting bird”
Settlers found the valley threaded with ancient Hohokam irrigation canals, abandoned for centuries. Darrell Duppa argued the new town would rise from the ruins of that vanished civilization exactly as the phoenix rises from its own ashes, and the name stuck over rivals like Stonewall and Pumpkinville.
Ancient Greek
Pennsylvania · est. 1758
“Pitt's fortified town”
General John Forbes took the forks of the Ohio from the French in 1758 and named the site for the Secretary of State who had backed the campaign. Forbes was Scottish and used the Scots '-burgh' spelling. The federal government stripped the h in 1891; the city fought for twenty years and won it back in 1911.
English + Scots
Oregon · est. 1845
“Land by the port”
The two claim-holders could not agree: Asa Lovejoy of Massachusetts wanted Boston, Francis Pettygrove of Maine wanted Portland. They flipped a copper penny twice out of three. Pettygrove won. The Portland Penny sits in a museum downtown, and the entire identity of the Pacific Northwest's largest city rests on a coin landing the right way up.
English
Maine · est. 1633
“Land by the harbor”
Burned to the ground four separate times — by the Wampanoag, the Abenaki, the French, and finally the Royal Navy in 1775 — the town was reincorporated in 1786 as Portland, after the Dorset peninsula whose quarries supplied the stone for St. Paul's Cathedral. The city's motto, Resurgam, means 'I shall rise again.'
English
Rhode Island · est. 1636
“Divine providence”
Roger Williams, banished from Massachusetts for insisting on separation of church and state, was sheltered by the Narragansett. He named his refuge Providence 'in a sense of God's merciful providence unto me in my distress' — and then founded the first colony in America with genuine religious liberty written in.
English (from Latin)
North Carolina · est. 1792
“Roe deer clearing”
North Carolina built a capital from scratch in 1792 and named it for the Elizabethan courtier who had sponsored the doomed Roanoke colony two centuries earlier — a founder who never set foot in the state he is now the capital of. His surname derives from an English place-name meaning 'roe deer clearing.'
English
Nevada · est. 1868
“Surname, of Italian origin”
The Central Pacific Railroad named its new Truckee River station in 1868 for Jesse Reno, a Union general killed six years earlier in Maryland. Reno had no connection to Nevada whatsoever; the railroad simply had a list of war heroes and a lot of stations to name.
Italian-American surname
Virginia · est. 1737
“Rich hill (riche mont)”
William Byrd II named the town in 1737 because the view of the James River from Church Hill reminded him of the Thames seen from Richmond in Surrey. The English name is Norman French riche mont, 'strong or splendid hill,' imported after the Conquest.
Norman French
Virginia · est. 1852
“Shell money / smoothed shells”
Roanoke was the Algonquian word for the polished white shell beads used as trade currency along the Atlantic coast — Europeans called it wampum's cousin. The Virginia town took the name of the river, which took it from the trade good.
Algonquian (Carolina)
California · est. 1849
“Sacrament”
Spanish explorer Gabriel Moraga named the river Rio del Santisimo Sacramento in 1808, moved by the valley's beauty. The Gold Rush town that grew at Sutter's landing took the river's name and became the state capital within a decade.
Castilian Spanish
Utah · est. 1847
“City by the great salt lake”
Brigham Young's pioneers named their settlement Great Salt Lake City, purely descriptive, in 1847. The legislature dropped 'Great' in 1868 to shorten it. The lake itself is the remnant of the Ice Age Lake Bonneville, and its salinity is what made the name obvious.
English
Texas · est. 1718
“Saint Anthony”
A Spanish expedition camped by the river on June 13, 1691 — the feast day of Saint Anthony of Padua — and named the waterway for him. The mission and presidio founded in 1718 took the river's name. The mission itself later got a nickname from the cottonwood trees around it: alamo.
Castilian Spanish
California · est. 1769
“Saint Diego”
Cabrillo called the bay San Miguel in 1542. Sixty years later Sebastian Vizcaino renamed it for his flagship, the San Diego, itself named for the Franciscan Saint Didacus of Alcala. Vizcaino's name held, and the 1769 mission — the first in Alta California — made it permanent.
Castilian Spanish
California · est. 1776
“Saint Francis”
The Spanish mission founded in 1776 was dedicated to Saint Francis of Assisi. The nearby trading settlement, however, was called Yerba Buena — 'good herb,' for the fragrant mint that grew on the dunes. In 1847, with the Gold Rush about to break, the American alcalde renamed the town San Francisco specifically so it would share the name of the already-famous bay and not lose traffic to a rival development.
Castilian Spanish
California · est. 1791
“Holy cross”
Portola's expedition named a creek Santa Cruz in 1769, and the mission founded in 1791 took the name. The Spanish crown also planted a secular town across the river called Branciforte, which developed such a reputation for gambling and idleness that the mission fathers formally complained to the viceroy.
Castilian Spanish
New Mexico · est. 1610
“Holy faith”
Founded in 1610 as La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asis — 'the royal town of the holy faith of Saint Francis of Assisi.' It is the oldest capital city in the United States, and its full ceremonial name is one of the longest ever given to an American settlement.
Castilian Spanish
Georgia · est. 1733
“Southerners — or 'treeless plain'”
The river's name likely comes from a Muskogean term for the Shawnee people who settled along it in the 1680s. It converged with the Spanish word sabana — borrowed from Taino for a treeless grassland — until the two became indistinguishable. Oglethorpe's 1733 colony took the river's name.
Shawnee via Taino/Spanish
Washington · est. 1851
“Anglicization of the personal name Si'ahl”
Settlers at Alki Point first called their claim New York-Alki — 'New York by and by' in Chinook Jargon, a joke about their ambitions. Doc Maynard pushed instead to honor Si'ahl, the Duwamish and Suquamish leader who had kept the peace with the newcomers. Si'ahl reportedly disliked the idea: his people held that speaking a dead person's name disturbed their rest, and he asked for compensation in advance.
Lushootseed (Salishan)
South Dakota · est. 1856
“Falls of the 'lesser adders'”
'Sioux' is a French clipping of the Ojibwe word nadouessioux, an unflattering term for a rival people often read as 'lesser adders' or 'snakes.' The Dakota, Lakota and Nakota use their own names. The city is straightforwardly named for the quartzite cascades at its center.
French from Ojibwe
Washington · est. 1881
“Children of the sun”
The Spokane people's name is usually translated 'children of the sun' or 'sun people.' The city dropped a trailing letter and gained a silent-e spelling that misleads nearly every first-time visitor into saying 'spoh-KANE.'
Salishan
Missouri · est. 1764
“Saint Louis”
Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau founded the fur-trading post in 1764 and named it for the crusading king Louis IX — a compliment aimed sideways at the reigning Louis XV, who shared the saint's name. Locals say 'Saint LOO-is'; the French 'Loo-ee' marks a tourist.
French
Florida · est. 1824
“Old fields / old town”
When Creek migrants moved into the region they found cleared farmland left behind by the Apalachee, who had been devastated by raids and disease. They called it talahassee — 'old fields.' The Florida legislature picked the site for a capital in 1824 precisely because it sat halfway between the rival cities of Pensacola and St. Augustine.
Muskogean (Creek)
Ohio · est. 1833
“Disputed — possibly 'raised up' or Latin Toletum”
Nobody can prove who suggested it. The best-attested story credits a merchant who said the name was 'easy to pronounce, is pleasant in sound, and there is no other city of that name on the American continent.' The Spanish city's own name is pre-Roman and unexplained.
Spanish (from Latin/Hebrew)
Kansas · est. 1854
“A good place to dig wild potatoes”
The founders wanted a name that was short, easy to say, and unlike any other town's. A local resident offered Topeka, a Kansa-Osage phrase for a spot where the edible tuber known as the prairie potato could be dug. It is one of the few state capitals named for a vegetable.
Kansa-Osage (Siouan)
New Mexico · est. 1916
“The title of a 1950 game show”
In 1950 the host of the NBC radio program Truth or Consequences offered to broadcast the show's tenth-anniversary episode from any town willing to rename itself after it. Hot Springs, New Mexico, voted yes — and has voted to keep the name in four subsequent referendums. The host returned every year for fifty years.
American English
Arizona · est. 1775
“At the base of the black hill (Cuk Son)”
The O'odham name Cuk Son describes Sentinel Peak, whose dark basalt cap sits above the Santa Cruz river. Spanish ears rendered it Tucson, and the silent c has been baffling outsiders ever since.
O'odham
Oklahoma · est. 1836
“Old town”
Creek people forced west on the Trail of Tears carried ashes from their ceremonial fire in Talisi, Alabama, and rekindled it beneath a great oak on the Arkansas River. They gave the new place the old town's name. Tulsa and Tallahassee are, at root, the same word.
Muskogean (Creek)
Washington · est. 1859
“Many waters / little swift river”
In Sahaptin, repeating a word makes a diminutive: walla means 'water' or 'river,' so walla walla is 'little river' or, as it is usually rendered, 'many waters.' The town motto leans into it: 'the town so nice they named it twice.'
Sahaptin
Kansas · est. 1870
“Disputed: 'big arbor' or 'painted faces'”
The Wichita call themselves Kitikiti'sh. 'Wichita' is a name applied by others, often explained as 'big arbor' for their distinctive grass lodges, or as a reference to tattooed faces. The city grew at a Chisholm Trail cattle crossing where the Wichita had built a village during the Civil War.
Caddoan (exonym)
Texas · est. 1876
“Falls of the Wichita River”
The town was named for a modest cascade on the Wichita River. A flood destroyed the falls in 1886, leaving the city named for a landmark that no longer existed. In 1987 residents built an artificial 54-foot waterfall so the name would make sense again.
Caddoan (exonym) + English
Delaware · est. 1638
“Wilma's people's settlement”
The site began as Fort Christina, the first Swedish settlement in North America, named for Sweden's child queen. The English renamed it Willingtown after a landowner, then Wilmington in 1739 for the Earl of Wilmington, who had approved the town's charter.
English
Arizona · est. 1854
“Disputed: 'sons of the river' or 'smoke'”
The Quechan people call themselves Kwtsaan. Spanish missionaries recorded 'Yuma,' possibly from a word for the smoke of their mesquite fires, possibly from a term meaning 'sons of the river.' The crossing here was the only reliable ford on the lower Colorado, which made the name famous far beyond the region.
Spanish rendering of a native term