28 November 2022
Detail of a 1763 map of New France by Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette showing Lake Michigan
The lake came first, and the state is named for that. The name Michigan comes from an Algonquian language, probably from the Old Ojibwa *meshi-gami (big lake). In modern Ojibwa it is michaa (be big) + -gami (lake); there is also the modern Ojibwa gichigami (sea, one of the Great Lakes), although historically this would also have meant big lake.
Indigenous tribes and bands traditionally and currently resident in Michigan include the Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), Huron, and Potawatomi, among others.
Michigan as the name of the lake starts appearing in English in the mid eighteenth century. For example, there is this from the 1747 Complete System of Geography:
Lakes are here very large, and in great Number; the principal of which are those of Erie, Michigan, Huron, Superior, Frontenac, or Ontavia, Nipissing, Temiscaming, besides others of a smaller size.
The United States formally created the Michigan Territory in 1805, which would become the state in 1837. Here is an announcement of that creation that appeared in the Hudson, New York Bee on 12 February 1805:
Michigan Territory. Congress have passed an act dividing the Indiana Territory into two districts, the new government to be called the Territory of Michigan, described as follows:
“All that part of the Indiana Territory, which lies north of a line drawn east from the southerly bend or extreme of lake Michigan, until it shall intersect lake Erie, and east of a line drawn from the said southerly bend thro’ the middle of the said lake to its northern extremity, and then due north to the northern boundary of the United States.”
Originally, residents of Michigan were dubbed Michiganians. That name appears as early as 10 November 1813 in the title of a letter printed in Washington, DC’s Daily National Intelligencer. The letter was protesting the expulsion of American residents of Detroit by the British during the War of 1812. Fort Detroit had surrendered to the British the previous year, and the expulsion was contrary to the articles of surrender that had been negotiated.
One still sees Michiganian occasionally today, but that name has largely given way to Michigander. That name appears in a 16 September 1838 travelogue in Northampton, Massachusetts’s Hampshire Gazette:
I came, as I told you, the last thirty miles to Detroit by rail road. This is part of one which the Michiganders are making across St. Joseph’s. Another one parallel, and but a few miles south of it, is about being made in the States of Ohio and Indiana, from the Maumee River to Michigan city.
In 1848, Abraham Lincoln labeled Lewis Cass, a political opponent and former governor of the Michigan Territory, a Michigander, making a play on words by likening him to a goose. But, although many claim him to be, Lincoln was not the coiner of the term.
Sources:
Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004.
“Canada: or, New France.” A Complete System of Geography, vol. 2 of 2. London: William Inkys, et al. 1747, 621. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.
“Federal and State Recognized Tribes.” National Conference of State Legislatures, March 2020.
Marrin, Doug. “Abraham Lincoln Used ‘Michigander’ as an Insult.” Sun Times News (Dexter, Michigan), 1 April 2021.
“Michigan” (16 September 1838). Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, Massachusetts), 14 November 1838, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Michigan Territory.” The Bee (Hudson, New York), 12 February 1805, 3.
Gray, Kathleen. “Michiganders or Michiganians? Lawmakers Settle It.” Detroit Free Press, 2 November 2017.
“The Michiganians” Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), 10 November 1813, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2001, s.v. Michigan, n., Michigander, n., Michiganian, n.
Image credit: Lewis Joliet and Jacques Marquette, 1673. Library of Congress. Public domain image.