4 March 2022
c. 1650 map of eastern Long Island showing the “Cannitticutt” shoreline
The US state is named after the Connecticut River, which in turn takes its name from the Algonquian *kwən- (long) + *-əhtəkw (tidal river) + *-ənk (place).
At the time of contact with Europeans numerous Indigenous tribes dwelled, both seasonally and year-round, in the territory that now comprises the state, but the largest groups were the Mattabesic in the east, the Pequot-Mohegan in the southwest, and the Nipmuk in the northwest. Currently, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe and the Mohegan Tribe of Indians of Connecticut have federal recognition. The state of Connecticut further recognizes the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation, the Golden Hill Paugussett, and the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation.
Europeans started arriving in what is now the state of Connecticut in 1614. The first of the Europeans to arrive were Dutch explorers and fur traders. The first settler-colonists there were the English, starting in the 1630s.
The name of the river enters into English discourse by 1639, when it appears in the Fundamental Orders, a constitution of the three English settlements at Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield. The Fundamental Orders are said by some to be the first written constitution in the Western tradition and gave rise to the state’s nickname of The Constitution State:
For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God by the wise disposition of his divine providence so to order and dispose of things that we the Inhabitants and Residents of Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield are now cohabiting and dwelling in and upon the River of Connectecotte and the lands thereunto adjoining; and well knowing where a people are gathered together the word of God requires that to maintain the peace and union of such a people there should be an orderly and decent Government established according to God, to order and dispose of the affairs of the people at all seasons as occasion shall require; do therefore associate and conjoin ourselves to be as one Public State or Commonwealth
And the use of Connecticut to designate the region dates to the same year, when Puritan minister Richard Mather uses it in his tract Church Government and Church Covenant Discussed, although this document was not published until 1643:
If you hold that any of our parishionall Assemblies are true Ʋisible Churches, and that the Members thereof are all, or some of them (at least) members of true visible Churches, then whether will you permit such members (at least) as are either famously knowne to your selves to be godly, or doe bring sufficient Testimoniall thereof from others that are so knowne, or from the Congregation it selfe whereof they were members here, to partake with you in all the same Ordinances, and parts of Gods true worship in any of your Congregations (as by occasion they may be there) in the same manner, and with the like liberty, as you would permit any that might happily come unto you from any of the Churches of Geneva, France, the Low-Countreyes, or yet from any one Church to another among yourselves: Suppose from some Church about Connecticut, or that of Plimouth, &c. Vnto the Church at Boston, New-Towne, Dorchester, &c. Or if not, what may be the Reason thereof?
Sources:
Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004.
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.
“Fundamental Orders,” 14 January 1639. Avalon Project: Colonial Charters, Grants and Related Documents, Lillian Goldman Law Library. Yale Law School.
National Conference of State Legislatures. “Federal and State Recognized Tribes,” March 2020.
Mather, Richard. Church-Government and Church Covenant Discussed. London: R.O. and G.D. for Benjamin Allen, 1643, 3. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Image credit: unknown cartographer, c.1650? Bibliothèque Nationale de France.