where did wisconsin get its name from?

Answer 1

The Chippewa Indian word “Wees-Konsan”- meaning “the gathering of waters.” Wisconsin is a state of sparkling rivers and lakes, it also has vast forests, and rich farmland.

Answer 2

Few basic facts about our state have caused as much confusion and led to as much muddled thinking as the derivation of its name. "Wisconsin" is the English spelling of a French version of an Indian name for the river that runs 430 miles through the center of our state. It most likely means "River of Red Stone" or "River of the Great Rock."

Answer 3

Wisconsin's Name: Where It Came From and What It Means


Foot of High Rock Few basic facts about our state have caused as much confusion and led to as much muddled thinking as the derivation of its name. "Wisconsin" is the English spelling of a French version of an Indian name for the river that runs 430 miles through the center of our state. It most likely means "River of Red Stone" or "River of the Great Rock."

Where It Came From
What It Means
The Physical Evidence
Sources
1. Where It Came From

The word was first used by Europeans when Father Jacques Marquette entered it in his journal in June of 1673, during the voyage he made with fur-trader Louis Joliet across Wisconsin and down the Mississippi. Near the start of their trip Marquette and Joliet stayed several days with the Menominee Indians on Green Bay and then in a town of 3,000 Miami, Kickapoo, and Mascouten Indians in Green Lake County. They left this village about June 10, 1673, led by two Miami guides who took them through the maze of the upper Fox River to modern Portage in Columbia County. There they crossed 2,700 paces of dry land and reached the westward-flowing river that would carry them to the Mississippi.

"The river on which we embarked is called Meskousing," wrote Marquette. "It is very wide; it has a sandy bottom, which forms various shoals that render its navigation very difficult." In his only other reference to the river, Marquette says that the Mississippi is "narrow at the place where Miskous empties." After they returned, Joliet used the name "Miskonsing" on a map that he drew in 1674, and when the news of their voyage was first published in 1681 the book’s author, Melchisedec Thevenot, called it the "Mescousin" River.

The name we use today was born when the explorer Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de LaSalle, changed the initial M… to Oui… in a report written in 1682: "On the east one comes first to the river called by the Savages Ouisconsing, or Misconsing, which flows from the east." Over the next two decades the initial M completely disappeared as writers and map-makers always called the river by some version of LaSalle's name. So for the next 150 years, the river, and by extension our part of the world generally, was known as "Ouisconsin." Sloppy printers sometimes turned this into Ouriconsing, Ouiscousen, and even Ouiskonche, but the "Ouis..." spelling was the one most often used by both French and English writers until the mid-nineteenth century.

As American soldiers and officials traveled through the area for the first time following the War of 1812, they initially used the French spelling. But when large numbers of lead miners streamed into the country south of the river in the 1820s, the U.S. government began to refer to it differently in debates and legislation. These legal documents created by the government in Washington sometimes used the French spelling, but they gradually introduced the uniquely American, "Wisconsin." The U.S. House of Representatives Journal was the first to print it (in the entry for February 1, 1830), during discussion of "laying out a town at Helena, on the Wisconsin river, in the Territory of Michigan..." In the five years that followed, the modern spelling was used with increasing frequency in government publications as well as in commercially published books and maps. In 1836, when territorial status was authorized on July 4th, we became officially "Wisconsin" (though Canadian and French writers often used "Ouisconsin" until the end of the 19th century).

Oddly, the person who did the most to create Wisconsin Territory didn't like the name. James Duane Doty, who first visited the region in 1820, was the principal advocate for the spelling "Wiskonsan," which shows up dozens of times through the early 1840s. "During all this time, Governor Doty and the legislature were in constant hostility," wrote contemporary observer Theodore Rodolf. "One of the governor's vagaries had to be settled by a joint resolution. The governor had a fondness for spelling the name of the territory as "Wiskonsan." The legislature, in order to avoid future embarrassments and misunderstandings, found itself obliged to declare by a joint resolution that the spelling used in the organic act should be maintained."

2. What It Means

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, many different meanings of the word were advanced, most of them founded on very weak evidence. For example, several writers interviewed elderly Indians, French residents, or fur traders who claimed it meant "Stream of a Thousand Isles," "Gathering of Waters," "muskrat house," and even "holes in the bank of a stream, in which birds nest." One of them concluded in frustration, "I have not found two Indians to agree on the meaning of this word."

When it was first written down, Marquette and Joliet had just visited the Menominee, Miami, Kickapoo, and Mascouten and had spent years with the Ojibwe, all of whom spoke mutually intelligible Algonquian languages. What did Marquette's and LaSalle's Indian hosts intend to convey by "Mesconsing"? Two slightly different Algonquian meanings are supported by linguistic and geographical evidence. They differ according to where one chooses to break the syllables that the early French writers transcribed.

Marquette wrote down an expression he heard as "Mescousing" and which Joliet and LaSalle both wrote as "Miskonsing." In 1935, native Ojibwe speakers recognized these three syllables as phonetic equivalents of 'Misko,' 'red;' 'Ahsin,' 'stone;' and 'Sin,' an ending that signifies a location or place. By this reasoning, Mesconsing / Ouisconsin / Wisconsin applied to the river meant, "Red Stone River." Glossaries of Algonquian languages, including Ojbwe and Sauk, confirm that these syllables had the same meanings 300 years ago as they do today.

But for this to make sense, "misko-ahsin-sin" has to be compressed into "Miskonsing" by eliding two of the middle syllables. Edward Taube, a modern linguistics scholar, suggested in 1967 that this sort of compression would have been very unusual. Instead, he hypothesizes the Algonquian word actually began as ‘Misi,’ ‘great;’ followed by 'Ahsin,' 'stone' and 'Sin.' This would make it mean "Great Stone River" rather than red stone. As with ‘Misko,’ the initial syllable retains its primary meaning of "large or great"over the centuries. The difficulty with this explanation is that a hard K must be introduced between the first two syllables that is not found in either ‘Misi’ or ‘ahsin,’ something that other linguists find equally unusual.

3. The Physical Evidence

Geologists have found red sandstone as far north as the river's headwaters in Vilas County and noted that around Wisconsin Rapids and Stevens Point was "a fine-grained to coarse-grained, pinkish to red rock..." Where the Wisconsin comes closest to the Fox, at modern Portage, red stone was plainly visible to visiting geologist George Featherstonehaugh in 1835: "In the neighborhood of Fort Winnebago …the sandstone beds are horizontal, disintegrate easily, and are often variegated in color, having red, orange, and dark tints." Further down river near Prairie du Sac, in June 1819 Capt. Henry Whiting saw "a hill 5 or 600 feet high ... on the left bank of the river, on whose bald top are seen naked strata of a red stone which are so regular in their angles and projections as to resemble fragments of a stupendous wall, built for the purpose of defense..." Thus, along much of its length red-colored stone is a characteristic part of the Wisconsin River shoreline and so the Indian name written down by Marquette could reflect this.

Alternatively, "great stone" is a major feature of the river’s mouth, and other rocky outcroppings were landmarks along the river as well. Where the Mississippi and Wisconsin come together, a massive cliff in modern Wyalusing State Park was a very prominent feature to anyone traveling on either waterway. Indian agent and geologist Henry Schoolcraft noted in August 1825, "On reaching the mouth of the Wisconsin, we entered that broad tributary, and found the current strong. We passed the point of rocks called Petite Grès, and encamped at Grand Grès." Featherstonehaugh describes the first location as "About forty-five miles from the portage, [where] another picturesque mass of horizontal sandstone presents itself, called Petit rocher." Schoolcraft’s route "carried us through the most picturesque and interesting part of the Wisconsin, called the Highlands or River Hills. Some of these hills are high, with precipitous faces towards the river. Others terminate in round grassy knobs, with oaks dispersed about the sides. The name is supposed to have been taken from this feature." The last sentence he explains in a footnote: "Sin, the terminal syllable, is clearly from the Algonquin, Os-sin, a stone. The French added the letter g, which is the regular local form of the word..." Above the portage, dramatic "great stones" through the Wisconsin Dells are one of the river’s most conspicuous natural features.

We may never be able to determine whether it was the color or the size of the rocks along the Wisconsin that gave us the state’s name. But we can be confident that it does not come from the oft-repeated "Gathering of Waters" and similarly romantic Victorian phrases that have been advanced, and repeated, with little regard for available historical evidence. Readers wanting more information than is given here can use the "Email Us" button below to contact Society staff.