How Delaware Got Its Name From Virginia's First Governor

Delaware got its name secondhand, from a cape, a bay and a river that all carried the title of an English lord who governed Virginia. He was Thomas West, Lord De la Warr. The name traveled a long way from him before it landed on a state, and you can catch it early on, in a sea captain’s log from 1610.

A cape in 1610

The U.S. Geological Survey’s record for the state tells it this way: in 1610, Samuel Argall found a cape near the entrance of a large bay and named it for Lord de la Warr, the first colonial governor of Virginia. The name “soon was written ‘Delaware,’” and it moved on to the bay, the river, and later the settlements west of the bay.

Argall’s own account survives. It was printed in 1625 and reprinted by the historian Alexander Brown in The Genesis of the United States (1890). On June 19, 1610, Argall left Jamestown with Sir George Somers, headed for Bermuda. They missed it. Argall ended up sailing north toward Cape Cod, and then he turned back “to the Lord De-lawarre, my Lord Governour.”

On his way south, on August 27, he anchored “in a very great Bay, where I found great store of people which were very kind.” They promised to bring him plenty of corn the next morning, but the wind shifted that night, and he left. The next day, he ran into shoals “about twelve leagues to the Southward of Cape La Warre.”

Here’s the thing you might not expect: the log doesn’t say when the cape got its name, or that Argall named it. It just uses the name, once, on August 28. The naming story comes from the USGS record.

Who was Lord De la Warr?

Thomas West was born on July 9, 1577, and became the third Lord De la Warr in 1602, Brown writes. He threw himself into the push for English colonies in America. On February 28, 1610, he was named Virginia’s first governor and captain-general for life. Brown says that if any one man can be called the founder of Virginia, “I believe that he is that man.”

He died on June 7, 1618, on his way back to Virginia. One old writer said he thought he’d “somewhere seen” that De la Warr died near the mouth of Delaware Bay. Brown went looking and found nothing. That idea, he wrote, “must have been purely imaginary.”

From a lord to a state

Henry Gannett’s 1905 list of place names for the U.S. Geological Survey says the state, the river, and counties in five other states are named for “Lord de la Warr, governor and first captain-general of Virginia.” There’s one exception in his own entry: “a tribe of Indians was known by this name,” and the county in Indiana got it “because this tribe had villages within the boundaries of the county.” The federal record gives Delaware’s statehood date as December 7, 1787. It all started with one cape, and the name did the rest of the traveling.

Sources & further reading

• Alexander Brown, The Genesis of the United States, vol. 1 (1890), pp. 428–438. “The Voyage of Captaine Samuel Argal,” begun June 19, 1610, from the copy printed by Purchas in 1625: the trip with Sir George Somers to look for Bermuda (pp. 428–429); the return “to the Lord De-lawarre, my Lord Governour” (p. 437); the “very great Bay,” its “very kind” people and the promised corn, and the shoals “to the Southward of Cape La Warre” (p. 438). The date August 27 comes from the log’s day count after “the 12th of August” (p. 435).
• Alexander Brown, The Genesis of the United States, vol. 2 (1890), pp. 1048–1049. Thomas West, born July 9, 1577; third Lord De la Warr from 1602; first governor and captain-general for life, February 28, 1610; death on June 7, 1618, on the way to Virginia; the unproven story of his death at the mouth of Delaware Bay, “purely imaginary”; “if any one man can be called the founder of Virginia.”
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 103. The state, river and counties “named for Lord de la Warr, governor and first captain-general of Virginia”; “A tribe of Indians was known by this name,” and the Indiana county was named for that tribe’s villages. (Gannett names him “de la Warr”; Brown writes “De la Warr.”)
• GNIS feature 1779781, Delaware (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record’s history note: statehood on December 7, 1787; Argall’s cape of 1610, named for Thomas West, Lord de la Warr; the name “soon was written ‘Delaware’” and passed to the bay, the river, and the colony.
• U.S. Census Bureau, state codes (2020). Lists Delaware’s permanent federal place-name record number (GNIS 1779781).