374 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1954 



place name has been transferred to the New World. The two names 

 Carolina and Dakota put in their appearance as State names modified 

 oppositionally into pairs by the preplacing of North or South. West 

 Virginia alone has the preplacing of West, and the name of the old 

 original Virginia is not modified to balance this. The two State names 

 Arkansas and Kansas are of the same origin, derived through different 

 channels. 



The various State names can be segregated into several sections ac- 

 cording to reference. 



ORIGINS 



Tribal Names. — Of the many American Indian tribe names formerly 

 occurring in the region now comprised by the United States, only 12 

 have survived as State names: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Illinois, 

 Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South 

 Dakota, Utah. Although fundamentally the names of tribes, they 

 were also employed in native and other languages as designations of 

 habitat, but in English, usually of rivers. 



Place Names. — Seventeen of our State names are of place-name 

 origin, having received their present application usually per exten- 

 sionem: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, 

 Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New 

 Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Wyoming. 



Geographical Terms. — There are only two names of geographical- 

 term origin : Montana and Pennsylvania. Montana is the Latin fem- 

 inine singular of the adjective montaanus, "mountainous." Pennsyl- 

 vania is a compound word. While honoring William Penn's father 

 as its first syllable, -sylvania is a feature-denoting word in neo-Latin, 

 signifying woodland and having somewhat more definite meaning 

 than the throwing of a Latin adjective into the feminine singular. 



River Names. — State names of purely river-name origin number 

 nine : Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, 

 Oregon, Wisconsin. 



Greeting Terms. — The only name in this category is Texas. 



Name Referring to a Male Person of Nobility or Ranh. — The State 

 names in this category number seven : Delaware, District of Columbia, 

 Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, 

 and Washington. 



Names Referring to a Female Person of Nobility or Ranh. — There 

 are three State names of this class, referring to two queens of England : 

 Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia. 



Name Referring to Day of Discovery. — The name Florida, refer- 

 ring to Easter Sunday, was bestowed by Ponce de Leon because of 

 his first sighting of the peninsula of Florida on Easter Sunday, 1512. 



