How Arizona Got Its Name From a Spot Just Over the Border

Arizona is named for a place that isn’t in Arizona: a spot just south of today’s border with Mexico, where a silver rush broke out in the late 1730s. The word was a local native name, probably Pima. What it meant, nobody has been able to prove, and that hasn’t stopped people from guessing.

The silver at Arizonac

When H. H. Bancroft got to the name in his History of Arizona and New Mexico, published in 1889, he gave it a few lines, “mainly for the purpose of correcting prevalent errors” about where it came from. Arizona, “probably Ari zonac in its original form,” was the native name of some local feature, “a hill, valley, stream, or some other local feature,” just south of the modern boundary, near the stream that runs past Saric. Spaniards first heard it in connection with a silver strike there, and the name went onto the mining camp.

That strike was something. Between 1736 and 1741, Bancroft writes, came “the mining excitement of the famous and wonderful Bolas de Plata at Arizonac.” The silver was so rich that the king claimed the site as his own. But the nuggets ran out fast, and in a few years the place was “wellnigh forgotten.” The name wasn’t. The federal record for the state says the place became well known for its silver and the name “spread north to the surrounding country,” until a territory took it.

Maidens, springs, and a big-nosed woman

Bancroft says the native meaning “is not known.” He lists the guesses he’d heard anyway, and they’re quite a list. From Pima, ari, “maiden,” plus “valley.” From the Mojave, “the sun’s beloved.” From Aztec, arizuma, “silver-bearing.” From Spanish, árida zona, an arid zone, or even narizona, “a big-nosed woman.” He calls the Spanish ones “extremely absurd,” and says the story that the original form was Arizuma came from nothing more than “a misprint in some old book or map.”

The guesses didn’t go away. Sixteen years later, a U.S. Geological Survey bulletin by Henry Gannett said the word “probably means arid zone or desert,” though it noted that “Mowry claims” it was Aztec for “silver bearing.” The federal place-names database today calls Arizona an Indian name “reputed to mean ‘place of the small spring.’” So depending on where you look, you’ll get a different meaning.

Arizuma, Pimería, Gadsonia

Congress tried several times to make Arizona a territory before it worked. In one try, Bancroft says, the proposed name was changed to Arizuma “to suit the whim of some theorist.” Other suggestions for the legal name were Arizonia, Pimería, and Gadsonia. Bancroft thought Pimería, for the Pima country, would have been “in some respects more appropriate” and “quite as euphonious.”

Congress passed the territorial act in February 1863, and Arizona became a state on February 14, 1912. Bancroft had one last complaint: the name, he said, “should properly be written and pronounced Arisona,” since the English z sound doesn’t exist in Spanish. He lost that one, too. The name is still spelled with a z, right there in the federal records.

Sources & further reading

• H. H. Bancroft, History of Arizona and New Mexico (1889). The Bolas de Plata at Arizonac, 1737–41 (p. 12); the “mining excitement” of 1736–41, the king’s claim, and the place “wellnigh forgotten,” just south of the line (p. 362); the bill whose proposed name “was changed to Arizuma to suit the whim of some theorist” (p. 508); “Ari zonac,” the probably Pima name of a local feature south of the boundary, the meaning “not known,” the footnote with the guesses, “extremely absurd,” the Arizuma “misprint,” “Arisona,” the suggestions Arizuma, Arizonia, Pimería, and Gadsonia, and the territorial act of February 1863 (pp. 520–521).
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 28. “The word probably means arid zone or desert, but Mowry claims that the name is Aztec, from arizuma, signifying ‘silver bearing.’”
• GNIS feature 1779777, Arizona (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record’s history note: statehood on February 14, 1912; “an Indian name reputed to mean ‘place of the small spring,’” first spelled “Arizonac”; the silver finds and the name that “spread north.”
• U.S. Census Bureau, state codes (2020). Lists Arizona’s permanent federal place-name record number (GNIS 1779777).