378 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1954 



located. The Delaware River was named in honor of Sir Thomas 

 West, first Governor of the Virginia Company, 1610, in the reign of 

 James I, King of England. His title in the British peerage was Lord 

 De La Warr, the barony De La Warr dating from the thirteenth cen- 

 tury. The name De La Warr is spelled a number of different ways 

 but the State name is one word. The Delaware Indians also get their 

 name from their former habitat along the Delaware Eiver. 



District of Columbia. — The District of Columbia, seat of the Fed- 

 eral Government and the capital of the United States, created January 

 24, 1791, was carved out of the States of Maryland and Virginia at 

 the close of the Revolutionary War. The form "Columbia" is the fem- 

 inine, used as a country name, of an assumed neo-Latin adjective 

 columhius, "pertaining to Columbus." 



Florida. — Ponce de Leon was apparently the first white man to 

 sight the coast of Florida and he named it in honor of Easter Sunday, 

 the day in 1512 on which this land was discovered. Easter is called 

 in Spanish the Pascua Florida, literally the "floral Passover." It was 

 the custom of the Spaniards to name a country for the day on which it 

 was discovered. The Spanish name Florida, accented on the next to 

 last syllable, is usually misaccented on the first syllable in English. 

 Florida was acquired from Spain by conquest and cash settlement in 

 1819 and became a State in 1845. 



Georgia. — Georgia was named in honor of George I and George II, 

 kings of England. George I made a grant to Montgomery about 1717, 

 but this grant expired in 3 years. In 1732, Oglethorpe obtained a 

 charter and named the land Georgia in honor of George II, then king. 

 Georgia is the neo-Latin feminine country-name counterpart of the 

 name George, borne by several British kings and preeminently b}^ St. 

 George, patron saint of England. George, according to etymology, 

 signifies "farmer," literally "earth worker," being a compound word 

 in ancient Greek denoting "earth- worker." 



Hawaii. — Hawaii, the name of the largest and most southeasterly 

 of the Hawaiian group of islands, is in local linguistic form, Haway'i. 

 Beyond this information one cannot go with certainty. It appears 

 that perhaps an early form of the word was Kaway'i and that the 

 meaning was "homeland." 



A Spaniard named Juan Gaetano discovered the Hawaiian Islands 

 in 1555. Hawaii was created a Territory in 1898. 



Idaho. — Idaho was the old name of the Salmon River tribe of In- 

 dians of Shoshonean stock. This tribe was called the salmon tribe, 

 in accordance with the occurrence of salmon, even as the whites say 

 Salmon River today. Ida- means "salmon," and -ho means "tribe," 

 literally "eaters," hence "salmon eaters." Idaho Territory was cre- 

 ated by Congress in 1863, the name Montana Territory having first 

 been proposed. Idaho State was created in 1890, 



