Connecticut's Name and the "Long Tidal River" Behind It

Connecticut was a river’s name before it was a state’s, and the river’s name came from the Algonquian people who lived along it. When English settlers came in the 1630s, the colony simply took the river’s name.

“In English, the long river”

Benjamin Trumbull says it in one line in A Complete History of Connecticut, published in 1818. “From this fine river, which the Indians called Quonehtacut, or Connecticut, (in English, the long river,) the colony originally took its name.”

He thought a lot of that river. He called it “one of the finest rivers in New-England,” for its “gentle flow,” its “excellent waters,” its meadows, and all the fish in it. And he writes that the first discoveries in this part of New England “were of its principal river and the fine meadows lying upon its bank.”

Who found it first is less clear. Trumbull says both the English and the Dutch claimed it. In 1631, a sachem named Wahquimacut came to Plymouth and Boston and asked the English to settle on the river. The governor of Massachusetts was kind to the visitors but did nothing more about it. Mr. Winslow, the governor of Plymouth, took it more seriously, and it seems, Trumbull says, that he soon went to see the river for himself. In 1653, in a declaration against the Dutch, the commissioners of the English colonies were still pointing out that Winslow had “discovered the fresh river when the Dutch had neither trading house nor any pretence to a foot of land there.”

“On the long tidal-river”

Benjamin Trumbull gave the short version. The longer one comes from a different Trumbull, J. Hammond Trumbull. He started a list of Connecticut’s Native place names before 1870, added to it over the next ten years, and printed it in Hartford in 1881 “as it is,” leaving the rest to others.

His entry for Connecticut is short: land “on the long tidal-river.” Under the Native spelling, Quinnehtukqut, he breaks the word into pieces, quinni-tukq-ut, and says it meant “the Connecticut valley.” In his notes on word parts, quinni- means “long,” and he names Connecticut as one of the words where it turns into conne-.

He also lists how other people wrote the name down. Roger Williams, in 1643, wrote “Quinnihticut” for the land and “Quintikoock” for the people who lived there. A priest, Father Dreuillettes, wrote “Kenetigcot” in 1648. The Dutch, in 1653, wrote “Conittekock.” It’s the same word heard by different ears, which is why the USGS says the name was “originally recorded with many spellings.”

How many meanings?

Henry Gannett’s 1905 government bulletin on American place names collects a few readings. He spells the Native word “quonoktacut” and says it means, “according to some authorities,” a “river whose water is driven in waves by tides or winds.” He quotes a writer named Haines for “land on the long tidal river,” and adds three more: “on long river,” “long river,” and “the long (without end) river.”

Most of them come back to the same idea: a long river. Benjamin Trumbull gives it “between three and four hundred miles,” from mountains near Canada down between New Hampshire and Vermont, then through Massachusetts and Connecticut to Long Island Sound. The U.S. Geological Survey’s note on the state uses the reading “place of the long stream” and says the river “became the reference name for the colony.”

From colony to state

The same USGS note gives Connecticut’s date of statehood as January 9, 1788. The state kept the name the colony had borrowed from the river, so if you drive across the Connecticut River today, you’re crossing the river that gave the whole state its name.

Sources & further reading

• Benjamin Trumbull, A Complete History of Connecticut, Civil and Ecclesiastical, vol. 1 (New Haven, 1818), pp. 29–35. The first discoveries “were of its principal river and the fine meadows lying upon its bank” (p. 29). Both the English and the Dutch claimed to have found the river first; Wahquimacut’s visit to Plymouth and Boston in 1631; the 1653 declaration of the commissioners of the united colonies that Mr. Winslow “discovered the fresh river when the Dutch had neither trading house nor any pretence to a foot of land there” (pp. 29–30); the river’s source, its course, and its length, “between three and four hundred miles”; “one of the finest rivers in New-England,” for its “gentle flow,” its “excellent waters,” and its fish (p. 31); “From this fine river, which the Indians called Quonehtacut, or Connecticut, (in English, the long river,) the colony originally took its name” (p. 32); Plymouth’s trading house at Windsor, October 1633 (pp. 33–35).
• J. Hammond Trumbull, Indian Names of Places, etc., in and on the Borders of Connecticut (Hartford, 1881), pp. iii, ix, 12, 60–61. His first paper on the subject in 1870 and “the ten years’ interval” of additions (p. iii); “QUINNI-… long; var. … conne- (e. g. Connecticut)” (p. ix); “Connecticut: land ‘on the long tidal-river’” (p. 12); “Quinnehtukqut: the Connecticut valley; land ‘on the long tidal-river,’ quinni-tukq-ut”; Roger Williams, 1643, “Quinnihticut” for the territory and “Quintikoock” for the people; “Kenetigcot, Father Dreuillettes, 1648”; “Conittekock, Dutch, 1653” (pp. 60–61).
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 90. “An Indian name, derived from quonoktacut,” meaning, “according to some authorities,” “river whose water is driven in waves by tides or winds”; Haines, “land on the long tidal river”; also “on long river,” “long river,” and “the long (without end) river.”
• U.S. Geological Survey, GNIS feature 1779780, history note (USGS news release, 1976). “Statehood: 9 January 1788”; “Named for the Connecticut River, which had an Algonquian Indian name originally recorded with many spellings, and interpreted to mean ‘place of the long stream’”; the river “became the reference name for the colony.”
• U.S. Census Bureau, state codes (2020). Lists Connecticut’s permanent federal place-name record number (GNIS 1779780).