Indigenous
Savannah
Georgia (GA)est. 1733pop. 147,780/suh-VAN-uh/
The meaning
“Southerners — or 'treeless plain'”
How it got the name
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.
Disputed / alternate theory
The purely geographic reading, from Spanish sabana, is still argued by some scholars.
Former names
- Yamacraw Bluff
- Savannah