Illinois' Name and the People Whose Word Meant "Men"

Lake Michigan was once known as the Lake of the Illinois, after the people who gave Illinois its name, a name the old books say means men. The people were the Illinois Indians, and the state and its main river both carry their name.

The lake, the river, and the people

Clarence Walworth Alvord, who wrote the first volume of the state’s official centennial history in 1920, says the Illinois, “to give them their proper name, the Iliniwek,” lived near “the great lake which for years was referred to as the ‘Lake of the Illinois.’” He also says the main body of the Illinois lived “in the valley of the river of their name.” In a footnote, he adds that a word close to Michigan “was early used as an alternative for the ‘Lake of the Illinois.’” In other words, early on you’d find the lake under either name.

Alvord describes the Illinois as close kin of the Miami, so close in language and customs that the French first took them for one tribe. An 1874 history by Alexander Davidson and Bernard Stuvé lists the tribes that made up the group: the Tamaroas, Michigamies, Kaskaskias, Cahokias, and Peorias.

“Real or superior men”

Davidson and Stuvé lean on Albert Gallatin, who, they say, “has prepared the most elaborate work on the structure of the Indian languages.” Gallatin gives the meaning of Illinois as “real or superior men” and traces it to a Delaware word written “Leno, Leni or Illini.” The ending of the name as it’s written today, they add, “is of French origin.”

Henry Gannett’s 1905 book on American place names for the U.S. Geological Survey keeps it shorter. The state and the river were “named from the Illini Indians, who inhabited the region, the name meaning ‘men.’” That’s two books in agreement, but you should know that neither one explains how its author checked the meaning. Alvord, in a footnote, passes along the one breakdown of the word in these books, from the Handbook of American Indians: “Iliniwek, from ilini ‘man,’ iw ‘is,’ ek plural termination, changed by the French to ois.”

A territory, then a state

On February 9, 1809, Alvord writes, “an act was approved setting off the territory of Illinois,” with a northern line that reached all the way to Canada. None of the books here says who picked the name, or whether anyone argued about it. On December 3, 1818, the president signed the act that made Illinois a state. Alvord, looking back at that moment, still calls the whole region “the country of the Illinois,” the same people the lake was named for.

Sources & further reading

• Clarence Walworth Alvord, The Illinois Country, 1673–1818 (1920). The Illinois, “to give them their proper name, the Iliniwek”; the great lake “for years was referred to as the ‘Lake of the Illinois’”; and the Handbook of American Indians derivation of Iliniwek in a footnote (p. 31); the footnote on Michigamea and the “Lake of the Illinois”; the Illinois “in the valley of the river of their name”; the Miami as their nearest kin, mistaken at first for the same tribe (p. 33); the act of February 9, 1809, “setting off the territory of Illinois” (p. 425); the act of admission signed on December 3, 1818, and “the country of the Illinois” (p. 464).
• Alexander Davidson and Bernard Stuvé, A Complete History of Illinois from 1673 to 1873 (1874), p. 34. The five tribes of the Illinois; Albert Gallatin, “real or superior men,” the Delaware word “Leno, Leni or Illini,” and the ending “of French origin.”
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 165. “Illinois; State of the Union and river in same State. Named from the Illini Indians, who inhabited the region, the name meaning ‘men.’”
• U.S. Census Bureau, state codes (2020). Lists Illinois’s permanent federal place-name record number (GNIS 1779784).