The fifty U.S. states, the District of Columbia, the five inhabited U.S. territories, and the U.S. Minor Outlying Islands have taken their names from a wide variety of languages. The names of 24 states derive from indigenous languages of the Americas and one from Hawaiian. Of those that come from Native American languages, eight come from Algonquian languages, seven from Siouan languages (one of those via Miami-Illinois, which is an Algonquian language), three from Iroquoian languages, two from Muskogean languages, one from a Caddoan language, one from an Eskimo-Aleut language, one from a Uto-Aztecan language, and one from either an Athabaskan language or a Uto-Aztecan language.
Twenty other state names derive from European languages: seven come from Latin (mostly from Latinized forms of English personal names, one of those coming from Welsh), five from English, five from Spanish, and three from French (one of those via English). The source language/language family of the remaining five states is disputed or unclear: Arizona, Idaho, Maine, Oregon, and Rhode Island.
Of the fifty states, eleven are named after an individual person. Six of those are named in honor of European monarchs: the two Carolinas, the two Virginias, Georgia, and Louisiana. In addition, Maryland is named after Queen Henrietta Maria, queen consort of King Charles I of England, and New York after the then-Duke of York, who later became King James II of England. Over the years, several attempts have been made to name a state after one of the Founding Fathers or other great statesmen of U.S. history: the State of Franklin, the State of Jefferson (three separate attempts), the State of Lincoln (two separate attempts), and the State of Washington; in the end, only Washington materialized (Washington Territory was carved out of the Oregon Territory and renamed Washington in order to avoid confusion with the District of Columbia, which contains the city of Washington).
Several of the states that derive their names from names used for Native peoples have retained the plural ending in "s": Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, and Texas. One common naming pattern has been as follows:
State names <onlyinclude> State name Date first attested in original language Language of origin Word(s) in original language Meaning and notes April 19, 1692 Choctaw/Alabama alba amo/Albaamaha 'Thicket-clearers' or 'plant-cutters', from alba, '(medicinal) plants', and amo, 'to clear'. The modern Choctaw name for the tribe is Albaamu.Bright (2004:29) December 2, 1666 Aleut via Russian alaxsxaq via Аляска (Alyaska) 'Mainland' (literally 'the object towards which the action of the sea is directed').Ransom, J. Ellis. 1940. Derivation of the Word ‘Alaska’. American Anthropologist n.s., 42: pp. 550–551 February 1, 1883 Basque aritz ona 'The good oak'. Oʼodham via Spanish ali ṣona-g via Arizonac 'Having a little spring'.Bright (2004:47) July 20, 1796 Kansa, Quapaw via Miami-Illinois and French akakaze via Arcansas Borrowed from a French spelling of a Miami-Illinois rendering of the tribal name kką:ze (see Kansas, below), which the Miami and Illinois used to refer to the Quapaw.Rankin, Robert. 2005. "Quapaw". In Native Languages of the Southeastern United States, eds. Heather K. Hardy and Janine Scancarelli. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, pg. 492To appear. "Arkansas" in the Oxford English Dictionary May 22, 1850 Spanish california Probably named for the fictional Island of California ruled by Queen Calafia in the 16th-century novel Las sergas de Esplandián by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo.