Detail of 1590 map of a region that would become part of North Carolina, showing Roanoke island (spelled Roanoac on the map)
21 May 2021
The states of North Carolina and South Carolina have been, at various times, named after three different kings named Charles—Carolus being the Latin form of that name. As such colonies are constructs of the European colonists, there are no indigenous names for the entire territory that would become the colonies and states, but the English colonists did adopt an indigenous toponym, Roanoke, for their first colony in what would become the Carolinas.
The first of the kings to give his name to Carolina was King Charles IX of France. In 1562, French explorer and colonizer Jean Ribault established a short-lived settlement, Charlesfort, on what is now Parris Island, South Carolina. The colonists abandoned the settlement the following year. The site was later occupied by the Spanish, who dubbed their settlement Santa Elena. The French settlement is documented in Samuel Purchas’s 1625 anthology of accounts of the exploration of the Americas:
With another Parcoussy they saw one old Father blind with age, but liuing, and of his loines sixe generations descended, all present, so that the Sonne of the eldest was supposed two hundred and fiftie yeeres old. They planted themselues on this Riuer of May, and there built a Fort which they called Carolina of their King Charles.
The first attempt at colonization by the English in North America was the ill-fated Roanoke colony, established on the island of that name. There were actually two Roanoke colonies. The first was established by Ralph Lane in 1585, but that was abandoned the following year and the colonists returned to England. The second, more famous, colony was established by Walter Raleigh in 1587. A resupply mission the following year was aborted due to war with Spain (i.e., the Spanish Armada), and when a relief expedition was made in 1590, it found the colonists had disappeared. To this day their fate is unknown, but they most likely were assimilated into the indigenous population.
Roanoke is an Algonquian place name, probably derivative of rawranoke, a word meaning shells or beads made from shells, presumably because shells were found or turned into beads on the island. In his 1624 history of Virginia, John Smith documents the native origin of the name:
With so much as we could carry we returned to our bote, kindly requiting this kinde king and all his kinde people. The cause of this discovery was to search this mine, of which Newport did assure vs that those small baggs (we had giuen him) in England he had tryed to hold halfe siluer; but all we got proued of no value: also to search what furrs, the best whereof is at Cuscarawaoke, where is made so much Rawranoke or white beads that occasion as much dissention among the the Salvages [sic], as gold and siluer amongst Christians.
Cuscarawaoke may be the actual indigenous toponym for island where rawranoke was acquired or manufactured.
The second king who lent his name to the future states was Charles I of England. In 1629, he granted a patent to Robert Heath to form a colony named after himself:
Know that we of our free grace certain knowledge & meere motion doe thinke fit to erect the sayd Region Territory & Isles into a Province & by the fulnes of our power & Kingly Authority for us our heires & successors, we doe erect & incorporate them into a province & name the same Carolina or the province of Carolina & the foresaid Isles the Carolarns Islands & soe we will that in all times hereafter they shall be named.
Charles I, of course, lost his head in the English Civil War, and following Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, his son, Charles II, granted a new charter for the colony in 1663, naming it for himself, the third King Charles in our story:
And that the country, thus by us granted and described, may be dignified by us with as large titles and priviledges as any other part of our dominions and territories in that region, Know ye, that we of our further grace, certain knowledge, and meer motion, have thought fit to erect the same tract of ground, county, and island, into a province, and out of the fulness of our royal power and prerogative, we do, for us, our heirs and successors, erect, incorporate and ordain the same into a province, and call it the Province of Carolina, and so from henceforth will have it called.
The colony was divided into North Carolina and South Carolina in 1729.
Sources:
Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004, s.v. Roanoke.
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020, s.v. Carolina. Oxfordreference.com.
Purchas, Samuel. Purchas His Pilgrimes, vol. 4 of 5. London: William Stansby for Henrie Fetherstone, 1625, 1603–04. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Saunders, William L., ed. “The First Charter Granted by King Charles the Second, to the Lords Proprietors of Carolina” (24 March 1663). The Colonial Records of North Carolina, vol. 1 of 10. Raleigh: P.M. Hale, Printer to the State, 1886, 23. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
———. “Sir Robert Heath’s Patent, 5 Charles 1st” (30 October 1629). The Colonial Records of North Carolina, vol. 1 of 10. Raleigh: P.M. Hale, Printer to the State, 1886, 7. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Smith, John. The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles. London: John Dawson and John Haviland for Michael Sparkes, 1624, 58. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Image credit: Theodor de Bry, 1590. Library of Congress. Public domain image.