3 February 2022
Detail from a 1743 French map showing the Alabama River as it flows into the Mobile River and into the Gulf of Mexico
The name Alabama comes from the name of a Muskogean people who lived in what is now the state of Alabama. The Alabama language is still spoken by several hundred people, mostly by those living on the Alabama-Coushatta Reservation in Texas. Europeans also applied the name to the river that runs through the state to the Gulf of Mexico.
The literal meaning of Alabama is unknown, although some speculative suggestions are often repeated as fact. It is often claimed that Alabama comes from the Choctaw albah (thicket) + amo (to clear, gather) or ayamule (I open, clear), so in this explanation Alabama would mean thicket gatherers. But this etymology is unlikely. It has also been translated as here we rest, but there is no factual basis for this translation.
The earliest recorded European use of the name appears to be on a Spanish map from about 1544, the Mapa del Golfo y Costa de la Nueva España, which records a settlement named Aljbano.
The name appears in English by 13 April 1708, when it is used in a letter from Thomas Nairne, a British trader and Indian agent, that relates the killing of an Alabaman at the behest of the Chickasaw.
After this Gentlman had informed me of most things materiall relateing to his Country, he thus went on. About 6 years agoe (say's he) Tonti with 7 or 8 Frenchmen more came up to our Towns, through the Chicta Country, made peace with us, and presented our Chief men very liberally, invited us Down to their Fort, and in passing patched up a peace betwixt us and the Chictaws. To be free with you Capt. said he I was one of them who was deluded, by their great promises. They boyed us up with a mighty expectation, of what vast profite we should reap by Freindship and commerce with them, so that upon their Desire I Killed one of your subjects the Albamas and carryed them the hair.
Sources:
Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004.
Eberhard, David M., Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig, eds. “Alabama.” Ethnologue: Languages of the World, twenty-fourth edition.
Cumming William P. and Louis De Vorsey, Jr. “Mapa del Golfo y Costa de la Nueva España.” The Southeast in Early Maps, third edition. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1998, Plate 5. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2020, s.v. Alabama, n. and adj.
Nairne, Thomas. Letter to Robert Fenwick, 13 April 1708. Nairne’s Muskhogean Journals: The 1708 Expedition to the Mississippi River. Alexander Moore, ed. Jackson: U of Mississippi P, 1988, 56. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Image credit: Antoine Philippe de Marigny, Carte Particulière d'Une Partie de la Louisianne, 1743. Library of Congress. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain wor