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Interesting. I thought it was because the river emptied into the Gulf closest to the state of Mississippi. Like, it would have been slightly unintuitive to have
by taftster 1mo ago
Interesting. I thought it was because the river emptied into the Gulf closest to the state of Mississippi. Like, it would have been slightly unintuitive to have named it the Missouri River all the way down past those Gulf Coast states. The history of river names and deciding which name continues after a confluence is quite interesting.
- throwup238 1mo agoIt is an Algonquian name for the river, which the French transliterated when they explored the upper reaches. The whole thing is called the Mississippi river because it was the first to be discovered and named, and the French name stuck (I forgot what the Spanish called it but that name didn’t stick)
- baruz 1mo agoA quick trip to Wikipedia says that the Spanish name was Río del Espíritu Santo, River of the Holy Spirit, and the initial French name was fleuve de l'Immaculée Conception, River of the Immaculate Conception, and later the fleuve Colbert or the rivière Saint-Louis.
- throwup238 1mo ago> The word Mississippi itself comes from Messipi, the French rendering of the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe or Algonquian) name for the river, Misi-ziibi (Great River). [1] I guess technically it’s the Anglicized French transliteration of the Algonquian name that stuck. Why that happened has more to do with the French-Indian war. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_River#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_River#History
- goodmythical 1mo agoem eye crooked letter crooked letter eye crooked letter crooked letter eye hump back hump back eye
- inigyou 1mo agoWhy is a crooked letter. Miyyiyyinni?