Detail of a 1758 map showing the colony of Rhode Island. Aquidneck is labeled Rhode Island on this map.
28 May 2021
The origin of the name Rhode Island is uncertain. Not only is it the name of the state, but Rhode Island is a name for a large island at the mouth of Narragansett Bay whose indigenous name is Aquidneck. Aquidneck is an Algonquian word, probably Narragansett, meaning “on the island.”
The English colony there was founded by Roger Williams in 1636 after he was banished from Massachusetts Bay for his political opinions, which included complete separation from the Church of England, religious freedom, and equitable dealings with the indigenous population.
There are two competing explanations for the origin of the name Rhode Island that are commonly put forth, and both have similar problems that cast doubt on their being correct.
The first is that in 1524 Giovanni da Verrazzano sighted what is now called Block Island, an island off the coast of and now belonging to the state and likened it to the island of Rhodes in the Mediterranean. A translation of a 1524 letter from Verrazzanno to King Francis I of France, who funded his expedition, reads:
The anchor raised, sailing toward the east, as thus the land turned, having traveled LXXX leagues always in sight of it, we discovered an island triangular in form, distant ten leagues from the continent, in size like the island of Rhodes, full of hills, covered with trees, much populated by the continuous fires along all the surrounding shore which we saw they made. We baptized it in the name of your most illustrious mother [i.e., Louise of Savoy]; not anchoring there on account of the unfavorableness of the weather.
Note that Verrazzano did not name the island Rhodes; he just noted a similarity in size and position along the coast. While it is possible that Williams or one of his fellow colonists was aware of this reference and mistook the sighting of Block Island for Aquidneck, there is no evidence that directly links this offhand comment by the Florentine explorer to the English colonists who dubbed Aquidneck Rhode Island.
The second common explanation is that in 1614 Dutch explorer Adriaen Block, for whom Block Island is named, sighted an island in the mouth of Narragansett Bay and commented on its reddish color. Johannes de Laet’s 1625 Nieuvve Wereldt contains a detailed description of Narragansett Bay and references Aquidneck, noting its shores appeared red in color:
daer legt een rodlich Eylandeken dicht by.
(there lies a reddish island close by)
According to this explanation, the English name is an Anglicization of the Dutch Roodt Eylandt. But again, Block did not name the island Roodt Eylandt, and while it is more likely that the English colonists were familiar with de Laet’s book than with Verrazzanno’s letter (early colonists often read what accounts of the Americas that they could get their hands on), there is still no evidence that directly connects Block’s observation about the island’s color with the later English name. Wikipedia claims, without citation, that some Dutch maps from 1659 onward use the name Roodt Eylandt. But these maps, if they exist, postdate the English name.
One might also guess that the name comes from a person named Rhode or Rhodes, but no suitable candidate by that name exists in the records.
All we know is that by 1637 Williams and his fellow colonists were calling Aquidneck Rhode Island. From a 1 May 1637 letter from Williams to the governors of the Massachusetts Bay colony:
They also conceive it easy for the English, that the provisions and munition first arrive at Aquednetick, called by us Rode-Island, at the Nanhiggontick’s mouth, and then a messenger may be despatched hither, and so to the [Massachusetts] bay, for the soldiers to march up by land to the vessels, who otherwise might spend long time about the cape and fill more vessels than needs.
The island was officially named Rhode Island on 13 April 1644. From a court record of the colony of that date:
It is ordered by this Court, that the ysland commonly called Aquethneck, shall be from henceforth called the Isle of Rhodes or RHODE ISLAND.
In 1663, King Charles I of granted the colony a charter officially declaring its name as the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations:
And accordingly our will and pleasure is, and of our especial grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, we have ordained, constituted and declared, and by these presents, for us, our heirs and successors, do ordain, constitute and declare: That they [...] are, or hereafter shall be, admitted and made free of the company and society of our colony of Providence Plantations, in the Narragansett Bay, in New England, shall be, from time to time, and forever hereafter, a body corporate and politic, in fact and name, by the name of the Governor and Company of the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, in New England, in America.
(I’ve omitted the long list of names of the company stockholders from the above.)
With the exception of changing colony to state, until 2020 the official name of the state had remained the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, giving the smallest state in the union the longest name. But in that year voters amended the state constitution, dropping the and Providence Plantations from the name, making the official name the State of Rhode Island. The impetus behind the change was unpleasant association of the word plantation with slavery. While we today commonly associate slavery with the southern states, those in the north were deeply implicated in the institution as well. Not only did northern states have slaves too, albeit in smaller numbers, but their economies were firmly enmeshed in the slave trade. For Rhode Island in particular, despite a short-lived 1652 law banning slavery in the colony, the colony and state had large numbers of slaves in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, although the number declined precipitously in the nineteenth. Slavery in the state was not officially and finally abolished until 1842, and the ports of Rhode Island were important hubs in the transatlantic slave trade.
Sources:
Bartlett, John Russell, ed. “At the General Court of Election held at Nuport on the 13th of the first month, 1644.” Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, vol. 1 of 10. Providence: Crawford Greene and Brother, 1856, 127. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Dezenski, Lauren. “Rhode Island Voters Approve Removing ‘Plantations’ from State’s Official Name over Concerns About the Word’s History.” CNN, 5 November 2020.
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, s.v. Rhode Island, Block Island. Oxfordreference.com.
Laet, Johannes de. Nieuvve Wereldt (New World). Leiden: Isaack Elzevier, 1625, 85. ProQuest Early European Books.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2020, Rhode Island, n., Rhode Islander, n.
“Rhode Island’s Royal Charter” (1663). Rhode Island Department of State.
Verrazanno, Giovanni da. “Selections from a Letter of the Navigator Giovanni da Verrazano to the King of France, Francis I” (1524). Verrazano’s Voyage Along the Atlantic Coast of North America. Albany: U of the State of New York, 1916, 10. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Williams, Roger. Letter to Governor Henry Vane and Deputy Governor John Winthrop, 1 May 1637. The Correspondence of Roger Williams, vol. 1 of 2. Glenn W. LaFantasie, ed. Hanover, New Hampshire: Brown UP/UP of New England for the Rhode Island Historical Society, 1988, 73. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Image credit: Library of Congress, Thomas Kitchin, 1758. Public domain image.