Name Origins of the Unites States + giveaway

  By Tiffany Amber Stockton

In February, we learned about carousels and their start as part of "little wars" in ancient times. You can read last month's post if you missed it.

Today, I'm going to start with the first of 5 total posts on the origins of the state names in the United States. These will be sprinkled throughout the rest of this year, not the next 4 months. So, let's go!

STATE NAMES and their ORIGINS

Alabama comes from the Choctaw word albah amo meaning thicket-clearers or plant cutters.

Alaska has ties to the Aleuts and the Russians, with the words alaxsxaq and Аляска, respectively, essentially meaning mainland.

Arizona has ancient roots to the Uto-Aztecan word ali sona-g, which was adopted by the Spaniards as Arizonac, meaning good oaks.

Arkansas is the French pronunciation of an Algonquin name for the Quapaw people, akansa.

California is truly a magical place. So magical in fact, it’s named after a fictional world invented by the author Garci Ordóñez de Montalvo, which Spanish explorers adopted when setting foot on the gold coast.

Colorado is another Spanish-influenced name that essentially means ruddy or ruddish. The name was first applied to the Colorado River for its distinctive color.

Connecticut, much like Colorado, was named for the river running through it. The word possibly stems from the Native American term quinnitukqut, meaning beside or at the long tidal river.

Delaware is also named for a body of water, but that body of water was named for Baron De la Warr, the first English governor of Virginia. The baron’s name is old French for of the war.

Florida taps into its Spanish roots by referencing Pascua florida, meaning flowering Easter, as Spanish explorers found the lush area during the holiday season. There's also a tie to the Latin word floridus, meaning strikingly beautiful.

Georgia may be known for its southern hospitality, but it’s actually named for King George II from Great Britain.

And that's all for today. If you're like me and LOVE puzzles, download this PDF for some puzzle challenge fun. You might be able to solve it on your own without reading the rest of the blogs in this set, or you can save it and add to it in future months. :)

NOW IT'S YOUR TURN:

* Which one of these states was the most fascinating to you?

* Do you live in any of these 10 states? If so, did you know this was the origin of its name?

* What do you think might be the origin of any of the other 40 states? (you'll learn about them throughout the year)

** Please do not reply via email with any comments. View the blog online and scroll down to the comments section.

Leave answers to these questions or any comments you might have on this post in the comment box below. For those of you who have stuck around this far, I'm sending a FREE autographed book to one person every month from the comments left on each of my blog posts. You never know when your comment will be a winner! Subscribe to comments so you'll know if you've won and need to get me your mailing information.

Come back on the 9th of April for my next foray into historical tidbits to share.

For those interested in my "fictional" life as an author and industry news about other authors, subscribe to my quarterly newsletter. Receive a FREE omitted chapter from my book, A Grand Design, just for subscribing!

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BIO

Tiffany Amber Stockton has been crafting and embellishing stories since childhood, when she was accused of having a very active imagination and cited with talking entirely too much. Today, she has honed those skills to become an award-winning, best-selling author and speaker who is also a professional copywriter/copyeditor. She loves to share life-changing products and ideas with others to help improve their lives in a variety of ways.

She lives with her husband and fellow author, Stuart Vaughn Stockton, along with their two children and four cats in southeastern Kentucky. In the 20 years she's been a professional writer, she has sold twenty-six (26) books so far and is represented by Tamela Murray of the Steve Laube Agency. You can find her on Facebook and GoodReads.

Hero or Enemy?

Raphael Semmes beside the CSS Sumter

By Marilyn Turk

When I attended Louisiana State University, I often drove down Semmes Road, one of the main streets that ran through campus. But I wasn’t aware of who Semmes was until I researched blockade running for my book, Rebel Light. Much to my surprise, the man for whom the street was named, Raphael Harcourt Semmes,  was a colorful character and famous Confederate blockade runner, or to be exact, commerce raider, during the Civil War. But why would LSU name a road after him?

Raphael Semmes

Semmes was born in 1809 in Maryland.  By the age of 14, both his parents had died and he and his younger brother were taken in by their uncles. One of them owned a small merchant fleet which traveled to ports around the world. With that uncle’s influence and another uncle’s position as a senator, Raphael received a midshipman’s appointment to the US Navy.

Over the next four years, Semmes served on ships that sailed the Caribbean, the coast of South America, and the Mediterranean. During times of leave, he studied law. By the time he became a ship’s officer three years later, he had passed the bar. He opened a law practice in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he married Anne Elizabeth Spencer with whom he would have six children.

CSS Sumter

Semmes served in the Mexican War during 1846-48.  After the war, he moved his family to Mobile, Alabama, where once again, he practiced law while on shore. In 1851, he wrote a memoir, Service Afloat and Ashore in the Mexican War. In 1853, he was promoted to commander and the next year transferred to Washington, D.C., assigned as a lighthouse inspector for the Lighthouse Board.

As the political environment heated up in the country, Semmes took the side of states’ rights, and when Alabama seceded from the Union in 1861, Semmes resigned from the US Navy. Afterwards, he was contacted by Confederate president Jefferson Davis and soon became a commander of the Confederate Navy in charge of the Confederate Lighthouse Bureau. But Semmes had other ideas. He convinced the Confederate Secretary of the Navy to allow him to outfit a boat as a commerce raider to stymie the Union economy and counteract the effect of the Union blockade on Southern ports.

Semmes and his officers of the CSS Sumter

Semmes proved capable of his goal as he wreaked havoc on US merchant ships while commanding the CSS Sumter. For six months, Semmes pillaged through the Caribbean and across the Atlantic to Spain. His knowledge of the ocean, coastlines, weather and shipping lanes, combined with superb navigational skills, allowed him to find his targets and escape Union warships. When he retired the battered Sumter in Gibraltar, he assumed command of a newly built ship which became the CSS Alabama, from Confederate sympathizers in England.

The next two years, Semmes earned worldwide recognition for his destruction or capture of 65 Union ships, making him the most successful commerce raider in maritime history. Union newspapers called him a “pirate” and a “privateer,” both names Semmes rejected because he served as an officer in the Confederate Navy and was not acting for his own profit. When the Alabama was finally sunk in a battle with the USS Kearsarge in June 1864, Semmes’ raiding days were over, but he escaped capture and returned home to Mobile and his family.

Semmes home in Mobile, Alabama

He was promoted to rear admiral and also served briefly as brigadier general in the Confederate army, the only North American to have held such ranks in both the army and the navy simultaneously.

After the war, he was arrested for treason and held in jail for four months before being released.

So what does this have to do with LSU? Well, after the war, Raphael Semmes became a professor of literature and philosophy at the university.

Following his stint at LSU, he returned to law practice in Mobile. There he wrote his book, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States, in 1869.

 

Statue of Raphael Semmes

Award-winning author Marilyn Turk lives in and writes about the coast – past and present. A multi-published author, she writes a lighthouse blog at http://marilynturk.com. Her latest release, Rebel Light, Book 1 in the Coastal Lights Legacy series, is now available along with A Gilded Curse, and Lighthouse Devotions on amazon.com.

Would you like to develop your writing skills? Marilyn is hosting a writers retreat March 22-25 at Blue Lake in southern Alabama. Whether you're just getting started or have been writing a while, this retreat will help you with your writing, inspire and motivate you. And right now, there's a "bring a friend" discount! Check it out at www.bluelakecwr.com.