How Georgia Got Its Name, and the Azilia That Never Was

Fifteen years before anyone called it Georgia, the land between the Savannah and Altamaha rivers was supposed to become the Margravate of Azilia. That plan went nowhere, and the name that stuck came from a king, George II, who put it in a charter in 1732. Here’s how a colony you’ve probably never heard of fell apart before anyone moved in, and how the one you know got its name.

The Margravate of Azilia

In June 1717, according to Charles C. Jones Jr.’s 1883 History of Georgia, Sir Robert Mountgomery got a grant from the Lords Proprietors of Carolina for all the land between the Altamaha and Savannah rivers. It was to be its own province, with its own laws, “under the name and title of the Margravate of Azilia.”

Mountgomery owed a yearly rent of a penny an acre, plus a fourth of any gold and silver found there. He promised to ship over a good number of families at his own cost. He published a “Discourse” about the place, with an engraved plan of how it would be laid out, and subscription books were opened at the Carolina Coffee House in Birchin Lane, near the Royal Exchange. He even asked the king for permission to run a lottery in Edinburgh, with 100,000 tickets at 40 shillings each, to pay for the trip.

None of it worked. It doesn’t look like much stock was sold, Jones writes, and when the three years allowed by the grant ran out, Mountgomery “found himself without colonists.” The grant expired, and “his Azilia remained unpeopled save by the red men of the forest,” as Jones puts it in the language of his day. In other words, no settlers came, and the only people living there were the Native nations who were already there. Jones calls the scheme “utterly Utopian.”

A king’s name, with a Latin ending

The next try came from James Edward Oglethorpe. While he chaired a committee the House of Commons set up to visit England’s prisons, Jones says, he got the idea that some honest people locked up for debt might do better as colonists in America. He and his partners asked the Crown for the land south of the Savannah River.

The charter got the royal stamp on June 9, 1732. In it, King George II made the land “one independent and separate province by the name of Georgia, by which name we will that the same shall henceforth be called.” The U.S. Geological Survey’s 1905 place-name list puts it simply: Georgia was “named by and for King George II, of England.” The federal record for the state adds that the name is George’s, “with a Latin ending.”

The rent was different this time, too: four shillings a year for every hundred acres the trustees granted, and not a penny of it due for the first ten years.

From colony to state

Back in the 1500s, Jones notes, Georgia was “then without a name,” just part of what he calls “ancient Florida,” the Florida that De Soto marched through. By October 3, 1732, less than four months after the charter, 114 men, women, and children had signed up for the first trip over. The federal record lists Georgia’s statehood date as January 2, 1788. Azilia got a printed plan and a lottery idea, and Georgia got the settlers.

Sources & further reading

• Charles C. Jones Jr., The History of Georgia, vol. 1 (1883). Georgia “then without a name,” part of “ancient Florida” (p. 5); Mountgomery’s grant of June 1717, “the Margravate of Azilia,” the penny-an-acre rent and the fourth of the gold and silver (p. 70); the families he promised to ship over (p. 71); the “Discourse” and its engraved plan, the Carolina Coffee House subscription, the Edinburgh lottery, the expired grant, “without colonists,” “unpeopled save by the red men of the forest,” and “utterly Utopian” (pp. 71–75); Oglethorpe’s prison committee and his idea (p. 85); the petition and the charter’s royal approval on June 9, 1732 (p. 87); the naming clause and the rent of four shillings per hundred acres (p. 91); the 114 colonists enrolled by October 3, 1732 (p. 114).
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 136. “State of the Union, named by and for King George II, of England.”
• GNIS feature 1705317, Georgia (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record’s history note: statehood on January 2, 1788; the 1732 charter’s “The Colony of Georgia in America,” “taking the name of George II (with a Latin ending).”
• U.S. Census Bureau, state codes (2020). Lists Georgia’s permanent federal place-name record number (GNIS 1705317).