How Did Each U.S. State Get Its Name? - General Knowledge Reaction
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- čas přidán 5. 09. 2023
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#history #reaction
*Thanks so much for the reaction! And for the additional context you added :)*
Great work! Hopefully we can send some new subscribers your way.
You did really well on the video (A very small nitpick: We don't pronounce the S in "Illinois"; my guess is that there was a heavy French influence, even if the majority of immigrants came from Germany and Sweden!).
@@VloggingThroughHistoryHe is Portuguese
@@franciscoaraujo2016he's talking about French influence on the name of the stage of Illinois
Awesome video! Subscribed to both of you :)
Chris really trying to convince people that his state's river isn't just a large creek.
Isn’t that every River?
Is an ocean just a REALLY wide lake? 😂 Is a pond just a stationary river?
We won't stand for this propaganda from Big River!
Charles Barkley "That not a river, that's a creek!" 😂😂😂😂😂😂
Ohio PR on damage control
As an Oregonian, I can confirm that while most of us don't know the actual origin of our name, most of us jokingly thought it did have something to do with oregano but most of us don't really believe that.
Especially because oregano isn't native, but came with settlers, so it really shouldn't even be considered. And even if it had been a native plant, it would still be odd to have the state named after a plant that isn't really common here. I've often thought another good choice was the French mountain men that came here, perhaps experiencing a very stormy winter and naming it Hurricane- "Ouragan" which sounds a lot like Oregon in French. That would make a lot more sense than oregano!
ha orangutan haha
same lol I figured it had something to do with some of our indigenous tribes but I didn't know what exactly lol
Excited to see how West Virginia got ours 😂
They named it after a song, everyone knows that
@@stc3145 ha I knew George straight had something to do with it 😉😂
Beats me you guys aren’t even the most western Virginia
Still think you guys should’ve gone with “Left Virginia”
@@CyberDrewan ...in all my 38 years living here, I have never heard such a perfect joke/name. You are a true genius 👏 lol
I learnt all 50 states (I'm not from the USA) because I needed something to keep me awake at boring meetings, and writing them as a list A. keeps me from dozing off and B. makes me look as if diligently taking notes!
Hahahah. Nice way to pass time
600 iq strats
Hi Chris! Torontonian here:
You were close with Mississauga: its pronounced Miss-iss-aw-ga.
Also regarding arizona's name: canada is similar. Our country's name derives from the indigenous word Kanata, meaning village. There is a town with the name Kanata, and its a suburb of our nations capital.
I was under the impression that the King wanted to name it after Penn. But Penn, being a devout Quaker, didn't want stuff named after him and proposed "Sylvania," instead. The King combined the two.
My favorite geographic origin story is King County, Washington. (Seattle's county). It was named after William Rufus King, who was Vice-President under Franklin Pierce. However, the residents didn't like their county being named after a slave owner, so they decided to keep the name, but change the origin story, by saying that the county is really named after Martin Luther King. MLK's image is the official county logo, you see it all over the place in Seattle.
they're definitely not keeping those same virtues alive in Seattle currently unfortunately. 😂😂😂 what a disgrace to MLK.
9:00 It's so interesting you mention how the last names change.
My last name is Park but our original pronunciation in Korea is "Bak or Pak". I think ever since the first Koreans emigrated to the US, we chose whatever word/other existing surnames that were similar to ours. Same goes for Kim or Choi as they are pronounced "Gim" and "Chweh."
It's interesting to see how many of the surnames that I considered UK origins were actually from different areas of Europe and had to change as they came over to the US.
Mine was spelled Saal and now is Sell
18:34 the story goes that US wanted to buy just New Orleans for that sum but Napoleon was like "you can have tho whole thing"
The botched colonization of Louisiana was arguably the worst mistake of the French monarchy. If they managed to get all those people who were starving in France the the Mississippi basin and establish lucrative agricultural communities there, North America would look totally different today. And perhaps they could have averted the French revolution altogether.
Though France didn’t own Louisiana in the decades just before the revolution. They’d had to cede it along with most of the rest of their American holdings after losing the 7 years war against Britain. It wasn’t until Napoleon conquered Spain that they got Louisiana back, so he was just offloading a newly acquired territory rather than figuring out how to administrate it from overseas.
@@AdamNisbett I've seen some articles that said that if Napoleon had "won faster" in Europe, that he planned to move the capital of the French Empire from Paris to a new city (called Port Napoleon, naturally ;-) ) he planned to build on Samana Bay in what is now the Dominican Republic (the French controlled the entire island from 1801-1809, not just the western part) so that said capital would be closer to the new world holdings and thus better able to administer them. But, he got bogged down and sold off the North American land instead so he could keep funding his armies, and eventually lost in Europe anyway, so none of that ended up coming to pass.
To a native Idahoan the name has a lot of meaning. Some geographers imply it's bland because it's made up, but to me it adds authenticity. There really is no other place quite like Idaho, and having our own unique word to describe ourselves is what gives our name meaning.
I grew up there, and my only beef is that Idaho is the gem state but the license plates say “famous potatoes.” I always wondered why someone thought potatoes were cooler than gems. 😆
Moved here to go to college in 1989 and have stayed. I've said since that time I wish they would close the gate and not let anyone else in.
Also, if you move here don't bring you politics with you. The reason why we are what we are and you are moving to get away from what you had is because of the politics we have.
But you ain't never gonna have a winner in the Miss America thing. Seriously, Miss I da ho.
@@mpetersen6 dude, we're half geek and half hillbilly. We don't care about some overglorified popularity contest.
Interesting story on your last name. My wife’s Maiden name is Maurer and her ancestors helped found the town we live in. And my last name has changed spellings. It used to be Grauwinkel which is actually phonetically correct, but the spelling changed somewhere along the way to what it is now Grouwinkel.
I'm always so excited for your videos.
FYI: Mississauga (Ontario, Canada) is pronounced Mississ-sahga. Apparently, there are many different interpretations of how this word came to exist with the most likely that it is an Ojibwa word meaning 'river of many mouths'.
My son played hockey in that area in Juniors.
Love your channel! Some info on Maryland, Lord Baltimore originally wanted to name the territory Crescentia. But decided to allow King Charles I to name it and left the required fields blank on the patent. Charles then named it Terra Maria after his wife and Catholic Henrietta Maria, which then changed to Maryland later.
I used to be a General Knowledge acolyte a long time ago because their content was interesting, but I've kind of forgotten about them. I'm glad you're giving them some love and that you're reminding me of them. - Sincerely, a Washingtonian
You are so good at reacting to USA videos. I hope you enjoy doing them as much as I like watching them
Really cool! Glad Chris is reacting to this channel. It has pretty interesting content.
General Knowledge is a great channel! Been watching their stuff for quite some time now. The artwork and research are both on point, clearly they like to make quality content.
Terry Pratchett had some good place name origins in his Discworld series
“The forest of Skund was indeed enchanted, which was nothing unusual on the Disc, and was also the only forest in the whole universe to be called -- in the local language -- Your Finger You Fool, which was the literal meaning of the word Skund.
The reason for this is regrettably all too common. When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool.
Rainclouds clustered around the bald heights of Mt. Oolskunrahod ('Who is this Fool who does Not Know what a Mountain is') and the Luggage settled itself more comfortably under a dripping tree, which tried unsuccessfully to strike up a conversation.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic
This is like the origins of the word "kangaroo"
@@CrisSelene The sequel to the sequel of the book this quote is from is entirely set in hilarious fantasy Australia, called Four Ecks because the map just says XXXX
@@CrisSelene Kangroo was mistakenly believed to be "I don't know/understand," however gangurru meant grey kangaroos.
I channel I would like to recommend is Ben brainard. He does skits where he assigns states personalities based on stereotypes. It does get political a lot of the time so I understand if you don’t want to watch it because of that, but he also has a funny miniseries about state city names
A girl I used to date years ago had grandparents that immigrated from Croatia. Her last name was "Brulja." Her grandmother pronounced it "bruhl-ya." by the time of this girl I dated, though, she pronounced it "brull-ja." It's funny how that can change in even in just a couple generations.
Thank you, Chris, for your kind words torwards the Iowa flag. Ohio also has a really awesome flag.
love your videos man please don't ever stop making them!
William Penn originally wanted the state to be called New Wales, and then Sylvania. But Charles II insisted that it be called Pennsylvania, honoring William's father. However Penn the Younger was embarrased by that name, thinking that people would think he named the state after himself, and he had an icy relationship with his father, and greatly opposed this nomenclature. But, he eventually gave into pressure, and we have the name as it is today.
A series I think you, and a lot of people, will REALLY enjoy in extra history, policing London. I slept on it for a long while and it's one of my favorites. It tells you how they did 'policing' before and the twists and turns they had to do before they got the 1st official police force and it's honestly one of their best series and just naturally a bit funny (a long with the tulip mania one) please check that one out bc I would love to learn any more facts you have about the surrounding times or anything else you got!
Thank you for the shoutout! Wasn’t expecting that! Lol. Glad to be a member!
2:20 That's why in Britain you get things like "River" which is Middle English and "Afon" which is Welsh, so you get the River Avon, which literally means "River River"
Even though Arizona’s name is possibly from the O’odham language, I still find it interesting how it was suggested to be a word of Basque origin, because even though the O’odham language is apart of the Uto-Aztecan family, it’s still in the same state as the Navajo language, and what makes that interesting is that it was once proposed that the family Navajo is apart of probably came from a common ancestor that Basque probably came from as well.
The proposed family was called Dene-Caucasian. The language families in the proposal include Na-Dene (the family that includes Navajo), the Yeniseian family, Sino-Tibetan, Burushaski (a language isolate spoken in Kashmiri Pakistan), the Northeast and Northwest Caucasian language families, and the Basque language. But of course this proposed macro family is as of right now classified as probably spurious. but of course whenever I see a connection between Basque and the American Southwest, the obscure proposed connection between the two will be the first thing that comes to mind for me.
@VloggingThroughHistory
I just watched a video of yours reacting to an Indy Niedel WW1 vid where you made a brief comment about how the Civil War tactics of 1861 underwent massive changes over the course of the war and were largely unrecognizable by 1865, being closer to WW1 tactics. Would you have any interest in making a video detailing the ways in which the tactics evolved over the course of the Civil War? I think it would be a very interesting video, especially for non-Americans like myself who wouldnt be as familiar with the American Civil War.
There are some welsh placenames in Pennsylvania too, around Philadelphia
Im not from old Ellicott city but im nearby in MD. Most marylanders pronounce it el-lick-it city. Happy to hear somewhere so close get mentioned! Its a beautiful historic town.
Actually the is/are dichotomy is more of a distinction between American and British English. One can most quickly spot this through reference to sports teams. Such as "The Chicago Bears are my favourite team" versus "The Chicago Bears is my favorite team." Always happy to help anyone who chooses to wear English football kit on camera. No knocks, I'm subscribing now.
28:44 Fun fact, that painting of Congress was painted by Samuel F.B. Morse, who would later be credited with the invention of the telegraph.
So glad to be a dugout canoe man. Watching from KC. The history community is strong here. My friend owns the flag that flew on the first landing craft that landed on iwo jima.
Watching from southern Ohio, down with Covid right now but your content keeps me going! Stay healthy!
Mexico is not only a federal republic, but it's Spanish name translates as the United Mexican States.
I watch handful of your videos, enjoy your takes and input, from down here in Monroe, Ohio. About 30 minutes North of Cincinnati
7:58 There's also a Nevada, Missouri - same pronunciation as the Iowa town you mentioned.
I get notification, I watch! No other channel do I wait EVERY day for new content like I do for VTH.
It's great to listen to VTH.
Thanks for the shout out for Nevada, Iowa! It’s not too far away from where I live.
I am from Utah and I’ve always heard that Utah was named after the Ute Tribe which means people of the mountain. I’ve never heard anything about that Spanish origin but it is kinda interesting.
I only got to see the Teton mountains in WY driving to Driggs, Idaho from Idaho Falls. It was so beautiful and almost looked cartoonish, the peaks looked so pointy, there were clouds and of course they looked somewhat colorful.
Oh I love General Knowledge’s videos ❤
Here in Utah, we have always been taught that the name Utah came from a Ute word meaning "the mountains" or "up in the mountains". It's still what the official state website says is the origin of the name, actually. I had to look this up, and apparently, no such word exists in the Ute language, so I guess I was told wrong my whole life. It may have come from a different tribe and the word means high up, though.
For Ohio, I wonder if "large creek" is a reference to the Great Black Swamp (covered the entire NW Ohio region and ran from just outside Ft. Wayne, Indiana all the way up to Toledo, Ohio). Not arguing the "Beautiful River" translation, but that could be why.
General Knowledge is one of my favorite channels. and is one of the first ones I ever subscribed to.
The name Nebraska actually referred to the PLATTE River, not the "Nebraska River" (we have the Niobrara, the Elkhorn, the Loup, the Republican, but no "Nebraska River"). It came from the Otoe word for Flat Water (referring to the PLATTE!), and the French re-named the river Platte. After Missouri was admitted to the Union in 1820, the upper portions of the territory just became known as "Nebraska", and remained so until the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854.
As someone from Cedar Rapids, IA I look forwards to your flag and state videos!! Go hawks!
Interesting how the name “Colorado” was almost used twice before the current state. When Texas was admitted to the Union, it took a while to determine its final shape, and at least one proposal involved carving up the new territory into two or three states, including one called Colorado.
Later, there was an attempt in the 1850s to split California into two states because the rural southern half resented the economic dominance of San Francisco. The new state would have been called Colorado. The proposal passed the legislature in 1859, but Washington, DC was kind of busy with other problems at the time.
Fun fact: "Topeka" means "cool place to grow potatoes" in the Kaw language.
This was a good video. I'm glad that he did the other U.S. territories as well. That was the more interesting part to me, as Americans who live there rarely get any credit for anything. I bet some Americans forget that these territories exist.
Here in Brazil there are also a lot of places that have native names and some states too. The states that I think have names of Tupi or Guaraní origin are: Paraná, Pará, Amapá, Roraima, Tocantins, Piauí, Ceará, Paraíba, Pernanbuco, Sergipe and Goiás. The Tupi ethnic groups lived more in the Atlantic forest, close to the coast, and the Guarani ethnic groups were more inland, their territory is divided by the borders between Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia, as far as I know.
The term "Tupiniquim" is used when referring to Brazil or something Brazilian, and in Tupi it means "Tupi people".
8:04 about 'Nevayda' there's also a town pretty close (Ames to Des Moines area) called Madrid; pronounced apparently Ma (a as in apple and emphasized) drid
What you said about local names is very true. I grew up in a small town named Muncy named after the Munsee Tribe.
Yay! You made a video about this.
Great video, as always! Keep up the good job!
i havent seen this guys videos in forever. if you want another channel that does similar stuff like this check out fire of learning, really informative and fun concept videos
8:50 in Canada it's a similar story where the name comes from the word "Kanata" which meant village in a native language
I like how deep into the history he got, so many channels would have just given the simplest answer without explanation.
You should look into the Russian missionaries in Alaska and the West coast. It's kind of fascinating how Christianity came to the Americas from both sides.
Minor correction: the name of the country Georgia in English isn’t derived from St. George but rather from the Persian name for the country: Gurjistan (which translates as “land of wolves”). The name in Georgian is Sakartvelo- land of Kartvelians.
I can’t believe you know about Nevada Iowa. My mother in law was from there. And I think the are you are from is near where my mom was from. She was from New Castle, PA.
Nevada is a very small town in Iowa. We went to a family reunion there. It was very much small town America. It was cool.
I guess my new nickname is dugout canoe then.
So cool to learn about my state's of history and here we got our name from (I tried to look for it besides the obvious river but never got close so this was refreshing to hear about my state).
Do more Grand tactician please. It’s so fun to watch
I went to school with a Maurer, and a Mowery, and I lived in central PA.
For Connecticut the first part “Quinnituk” likely refers to the river itself - as “tuk” or “tuck” is Algonquian for “river”. This appears elsewhere in the state: Saugatuck = tidal river, Mishtuck (Mystic) = marsh river, etc. Wonder if the Housatonic river was mispronounced from “Housatuck”.
From my research on my family history, I’ve seen that my last name was Saal in Germany and now it is Sell here in PA. Also I have some ancestors that were Meck’s, which I thought was German, but it appears to be Scottish in origin stemming from McKee or McKay.
2:57 There's even a slight smidgeon of French names here in South Australia, as the area was once mapped by some French guy shortly prior to the British colonisation.
Berks county in PA, which is where I call home, is named from Berkshire in England.
I was talking to an American of German descent, of which there are many in my current state.(3 hints: Horseshoes, Racecars, Zoo?) Her surname is spelled Shrum. She said that when her grandparents came around WWII, it was originally “Schrum” but the ‘c’ was scrapped in the process known as Anglicization. Hence 9:00 of this video. The way she pronounced it was in a way that rhymed with plum, but it’s possible that the ‘u’ was pronounced different like Schrüm before they came stateside, but that’s just conjecture.
I also live in said state, and my last name also underwent changes from the German word for "dove" to what it is today.
You mentioned how a city in Idaho pronounced Nevada differently. There's a city in Washington named "Des Moines" but unlike in Iowa, it's actually pronounced "De Moins" here, which I thought was so weird when we moved to the area
All love from Iowa!
7:59 There's also a town in Missouri that's is spelled like Nevada but pronounced that way
I really like General Knowledge. I've seen quite a few of his videos.
Washington state wanted to be the 40th state, an applied as Columbia, seeing as we are between the Columbia river, and British Columbia. A congressperson from Kentucky objected , because of the C in DC. So they went with Washington. Note, at this time, the older, bigger city in the capitol was called Georgetown (hence the university name) , so there was less Washington overlap. and all the back and forth made Washington the 42 state.
Its confusing af having the capitol and a state on other side of the country called the same thing they should chnage the state name to Sasquatch country or somethin.
One thing that is interesting is how many tribes are named by a separate tribal group (ie, the missouri "people with dugout canoes" was almost certainly a third-party designation from a more euro-proximal tribe)
The word mauer in German means wall
So you're German ancestors were probably builders
Note: Im bad in such stuff so I'm maybe wrong
I live in Arkansas but born and raised in California! Never knew both states name origin so awesome!
I did a quick google search wiki says this.
Ohio derives its name from the Ohio River that forms its southern border, which, in turn, originated from the Seneca word ohiːyo', meaning "good river", "great river", or "large creek".
Is vs. Are clarification was great
Regarding places named by varying pronunciations: there is a suburb of Ottawa called Kanata which is the much more accurate pronunciation of Canada. (meaning 'the village' in Algonquin (i think..))
17:46 The Caddo word Taysha was adapted by the Spanish to Tejas, which eventually became Texas in English. So it does kind of have a Spanish root.
In Spanish it was Texas too, it's just that in old Spanish the x also represented the j sound, it was penounced Tejas and written as both Texas and Tejas. Other examples are Quixote/Quijote, México/Méjico, Ximena/Jimena, etc.
The Mexican state of Yucatán means something like "I don't understand you", which is what natives answered when the Spanish asked the name of the place.
Would love for you to come film some about our history here in Fort Wayne. Hell, I'd even pay for your hotel stay. (Johnny Appleseeds grave is like 3 miles from my house here.)
Using are for a corporate entity is a Britticism. They use “General Electric are announcing their quarterly reports” routinely.
Hi sir, just as a quick aside, Pensacola holds the distinction of the oldest continuous european settlement in America. Search Tristan de Luna.
Love your worl Chris 🎉🎉🎉
Last names are also interesting with how we got them. LIke how a lot of them are just derived from what your ancestors did for work or the land they were from.
Marylander here (btw, it's "Ella-Kit" City, lol). The theory of Mary makes sense, but Maryland does come from Queen Henrietta Maria of France. Calvert originally wanted to call it Crescentia, but King Charles I decided on "Mary's Land" (Terra Mariea)
the Nee-Vay-Duh pronunciation is used for a town around the same size in Missouri
New Jersey! :D New Jersey's history is a bit more complex, as it was originally two colonies: The Southern portion own by the Swedes, and the Northern portion own by the Dutch. They eventually were own by the British, and were called West Jersey and East Jersey. They were eventually combined into one Colony, which is New Jersey.
Michigan is French. It's more of a mash-up translation of French and any number of Indian languages. Could be from Chippewa, Anishinaabek, Odawa, Algonquin and Ojibwe. It's usually said to come from the word Mishigamaw but also could have come from the word Mitchimakinak which means big turtle - because Mackinaw Island resembled a turtle - which it doesn't so some say it refers to the lower peninsula which does sort-of resemble a turtle.
It's actually closer to a Huron-Wyandot wording. Mitchigame and Michinnimakinong were "The Big Hand and The Great Turtle". The Great Turtle was the giver of all life and the Big Hand was the protector of the world and the imprint the gods left for the people to remember them by. The French changed them to Michigame and Michillimackinac, the British finalized them as Michigan and Mackinac.
I worked on Mackinac Island for 2 summers and went up there every summer for 10 years straight as a kid.
Also only the City on the mainland is spelled Mackinaw due to the British Mailing system that required seperate postal addresses. Mackinac Island, Mackinac Bridge, The Straights of Mackinac are all spelled with the AC while the City gets the AW and everything is pronounced with the AW.
Yes that's exactly the cause of there being a lot of confusion with it. All kinds of languages moving in and out of the area over a long time period and they all used similar words with different meanings.@@JohnReedy07163
I've heard "California" derived from the Spanish for "hot forge" ("forja caliente" according to Google translate)
Please, can you do the same with the European countries? It would be so cool to see your reaction
25:11 the monarch hasn’t been known with their Normandy title in the channel islands since 1954
Pen and paper I can easily name all 50. I don't know if it was the head injuries from high school (American) football, or not, but my memory is terrible. By the time I got to 15 (counting with my fingers as i went), I was second-guessing myself about if I had just repeated a state I had already named.
I would love to visit Aslaska one day. ;-)
I always thought Arizona came from the English/Spanish for arid zone "zona árida" given the dry arid climate.
We have a Nevada in Missouri too, also pronounced your Ohio version
FYI, the Ojibwe people come from the northeast and moved to Minnesota a long time ago. It was named by native Minnesotans.