How Kentucky Got Its Name (and the Dark and Bloody Ground)

A 1922 history says the name Kentucky means “the Land of To-morrow,” and that the famous “Dark and Bloody Ground” comes from a mistake. That’s one answer. Older books give others, and a federal list from 1905 says nobody really knows.

The Dark and Bloody Ground

You’ve probably heard the nickname. In their 1874 History of Kentucky, Lewis Collins and Richard H. Collins explain it with an entry for 1745. Kentucky, they write, “remains the hunting ground of the northern and southern nations, where they meet at war; hence the appellation, Dark and Bloody Ground.”

Later in the same volume, an 1871 essay by Dr. Thomas E. Pickett ties the nickname to older fighting, with traces of forts and battlefields along the Ohio, and passes along a translation. George Rogers Clark, Pickett says, by way of a Dr. Campbell, gave “Kentuck-e” as meaning “the river of blood” in the language of the Indians. The book spells the early name in more than one way, too. The Collinses’ entry for 1775 has Daniel Boone marking a road “by way of Cumberland Gap, to Cantuckey.”

The Land of To-morrow

William Elsey Connelley opens his 1922 History of Kentucky, written with E. M. Coulter, with a chapter on names, and he doesn’t hedge. The meanings people give for Kentucky, “Meadow-lands,” “At the Head of a River,” and “The Dark and Bloody Ground,” are, in his words, “all applications of misapprehensions.” He says the bloody name belonged first to the Ohio River and only later got attached to the Kentucky River and the land around it.

His version comes from George Wright, “the sage of the Wyandots,” whose Wyandot name, Connelley says, meant “The Foot-print of the Wolf.” Wright died in what is now Oklahoma in 1899. Connelley says he knew him for a quarter of a century. According to Wright, the Wyandot word “Kah’-ten-tah’-teh” means a day, and the short form “Ken-tah’-teh” can mean “to-morrow,” though Connelley admits it isn’t the word people ordinarily used for that. The Iroquois, who had taken the Ohio Valley by conquest, used it for those lands, the place they meant to live if they were ever pushed out of their homes in the East. Connelley translates it as “The Land of To-morrow.” Settlers, he says, bent it into “Cantocky,” “Cantuckee,” and “Kaintuckee,” and finally Kentucky.

“There can be little or no doubt,” Connelley writes, that this is the true meaning. Keep in mind, though, that his case rests mostly on what one man told him, and none of the other books here mentions it.

What the federal list said

Henry Gannett, compiling place names for the U.S. Geological Survey in 1905, didn’t pick a side. His entry for Kentucky reads, in full: “State of the Union. An Indian word of uncertain meaning.”

The name was official long before anyone settled what it meant. Virginia set up Kentucky County on December 6, 1776, out of part of Fincastle County, and on June 1, 1792, Kentucky entered the Union as a state. So depending on which book you open, the name means a river of blood, a land of tomorrow, or nothing anyone can pin down. Connelley was sure he’d settled it, but he’s the only one on this shelf who tells it his way.

Sources & further reading

• William Elsey Connelley and E. M. Coulter, History of Kentucky, vol. 1 (1922), pp. 1–2. “Meadow-lands,” “At the Head of a River,” “The Dark and Bloody Ground,” and “all applications of misapprehensions”; the bloody name moving from the Ohio to the Kentucky River; the Iroquois conquest and “The Land of To-morrow”; George Wright, “the sage of the Wyandots,” who died in 1899 (p. 1); his name, “The Foot-print of the Wolf,” and Connelley’s quarter century with him; “Kah’-ten-tah’-teh,” “Ken-tah’-teh,” “Cantocky,” “Cantuckee,” “Kaintuckee”; “There can be little or no doubt” (p. 2).
• Lewis Collins and Richard H. Collins, History of Kentucky, vol. 1 (1874). The 1745 entry, “hence the appellation, Dark and Bloody Ground” (p. 15); Boone’s road “to Cantuckey,” 1775 (p. 18); Kentucky County established by Virginia, December 6, 1776 (p. 19); Kentucky admitted as a state, June 1, 1792 (p. 23); Thomas E. Pickett’s 1871 essay printed in the volume, with the forts and old battlefields along the Ohio (p. 381) and General Clark’s “the river of blood,” by way of Dr. Campbell (p. 382).
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 173. “Kentucky; State of the Union. An Indian word of uncertain meaning.”
• U.S. Census Bureau, state codes (2020). Lists Kentucky’s permanent federal place-name record number (GNIS 1779786).