Facsimile of a 1684 map of Louisiane (Louisiana) made by Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin, who accompanied Cavelier’s expedition. The facsimile dates to c.1900; the original has been lost.
30 April 2021
Louisiana was named in 1682 after King Louis XIV of France by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. The claim to the territory was exchanged among European states several times, and it was eventually sold by Napoleon to the United States in 1803 for $16 million (around $375 million in today’s dollars). Louisiana, or Louisiane in French, originally encompassed an area much larger than the present-day state. The territory, at the time of the sale to the United States, included what are now the states of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska; most of what are now Louisiana, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota; and portions of what are now Texas, New Mexico, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.
Obviously, there is no single, indigenous name for this wide territory, and even within the borders of the present-day state, there were a number of indigenous tribes and bands who made it their home. Currently, there are four federally recognized tribes in the state of Louisiana: the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana, the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians, and the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana. The Chitimacha are the only tribe in the state still occupying a portion of their original lands.
While there is no single indigenous name for the territory now occupied by the state of Louisiana, there are any number of indigenous toponyms for places within the state. For example, in the Tunica language New Orleans is called tonrɔwahal'ukini, literally white man’s town, from oni (person) + rɔwa (white) + hali (land) + uki (to dwell).
The name Louisiana appears in English by 1693, using the French spelling. From Bohun and Barnard’s Geographical Dictionary of that year:
Louisiane, a large Country South West of New France in America, lately discovered by the French as far as to the Mouth of the River Colbert, in the South Sea, and so called in honour of their present King Lewis XIV. They report it to enjoy a very fruitful Clime for Wine, Corn, Fruits, Fish, and Fowl.
The familiar English spelling appears the following year in a theological text by Humphry Hody:
The Inhabitants of Louisiana, another Country in the Northern America, lately discover'd by the French, seem to hold, That the Soul after Death shall be re-united to its Body.
Sources:
Bohun, Edmund and J.A. Bernard. A Geographical Dictionary. London: Charles Brome, 1693, 238. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.
Hody, Humphrey. The Resurrection of the (Same) Body. London: Awnsham and John Churchill, 1694, 46. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana. Tunica-English Dictionary, 2020.
Image credit: Library of Congress. Public domain image.