How Mississippi Got Its Name, and the River's Other Names

When France handed its Louisiana colony to a merchant named Antoine Crozat, the grant renamed the Mississippi River the “river of St Louis.” That name didn’t last, and the state of Mississippi carries the river’s Indian name instead.

A river with a long list of names

The Crozat story comes from J. F. H. Claiborne’s Mississippi, as a Province, Territory and State, published in 1880. The same grant, he says, renamed the Missouri the “river St. Philippe” and the Wabash “St Jerome.” Then, in a footnote, he lists the other names the big river had gone by.

The Indians on the coast called it Malbouchia, Claiborne writes, going by Iberville, the French commander who entered the river on March 2, 1699. Claiborne quotes Iberville’s own report setting out “for Malbouchia, (the name given by the savages on this coast to the Mississippi,)”. According to Du Pratz, Claiborne adds, the Indians of the west had names for it “all signifying the ‘Father of waters.’” Claiborne lists a few more names that some tribes used, and the last one comes with a translation: “river of fishes.”

The Spanish called it the Rio Grande and the Rio del Espiritu Santo, among others. The French called it the Palisade first, “from the number of upright snags and young cotton-wood trees on the bar and passes,” then the Rio Colbert, “after the great minister,” and then the river St. Louis, “after the King.” That’s three French names in a row, and none of them is the one on the map today.

Dunbar Rowland’s Encyclopedia of Mississippi History, from 1907, takes the Spanish name further. “Rio del Espiritu Santo,” he writes, means “River of the Holy Ghost,” and one account of De Soto’s expedition makes it “plain that De Soto knew the river by this name.”

Father of Waters, or Fish River?

What about the name that stuck? The federal place-name book Henry Gannett put together in 1905 calls it “An Indian word meaning ‘great river,’ or ‘gathering in of all the waters,’ and ‘an almost endless river spread out.’” That’s three meanings in one sentence, and you get to take your pick.

William Elsey Connelley, writing in a 1922 history of Kentucky, threw out all the grand ones. The name is Algonquian, he says, and “Sipu in that tongue means river.” Delaware traditions, he says, tell of a migration to a mighty river, “now believed to have been the Mississippi,” that they called the “Namaesi-sipu,” or Fish River, and “The name of the river gave name to the State of Mississippi.” He goes after “Gathering in all the Waters,” “Great Long River,” “Father of Waters,” and “Mother of Floods” by name. “White people may rightly attribute these qualities to the great river,” he wrote, “but it is erroneous and wrong to contend that the Indian name carried any such meaning.”

Notice that Claiborne’s footnote has a “river of fishes” in it too. If you go with Connelley, the name’s about what was in the water, not how big it was.

From territory to state

On April 7, 1798, President Adams approved an act of Congress creating “one district, to be called the Mississippi Territory,” Franklin L. Riley writes in his School History of Mississippi. That first territory was a strip across what’s now Mississippi and Alabama. On December 10, 1817, Congress declared Mississippi a state. So a name that France once tried to swap for a king’s ended up on the map twice, on the river and on the state, and the books still don’t agree on what it means.

Sources & further reading

• J. F. H. Claiborne, Mississippi, as a Province, Territory and State, vol. 1 (1880). Iberville’s 1699 report: “for Malbouchia, (the name given by the savages on this coast to the Mississippi,)” and entering the river on March 2, 1699 (p. 18); the grant to Antoine Crozat, which changed the name of the Mississippi to the “river of St Louis,” the Missouri to the “river St. Philippe,” and the Wabash to “St Jerome” (p. 31); the footnote on the river’s names: Malbouchia, according to Iberville; Du Pratz’s western names, “all signifying the ‘Father of waters’”; “river of fishes”; the Spanish Rio Grande, Rio del Espiritu Santo, and Rio Escondido; the French Palisade, “from the number of upright snags and young cotton-wood trees on the bar and passes,” Rio Colbert, “after the great minister,” and St. Louis, “after the King” (pp. 31–32).
• Dunbar Rowland, ed., Encyclopedia of Mississippi History, vol. 1 (1907), pp. 689–690. The entry “Espiritu Santo River”: “Rio del Espiritu Santo,” or “River of the Holy Ghost”; the Biedma narrative, which makes it “plain that De Soto knew the river by this name.”
• Franklin L. Riley, School History of Mississippi (copyright 1900; printing dated 1909). The act of April 7, 1798, approved by President Adams, creating “one district, to be called the Mississippi Territory,” and the footnote on its strip across present Mississippi and Alabama (p. 92); the act of Congress of December 10, 1817, declaring Mississippi a state (p. 147).
• William Elsey Connelley and E. M. Coulter, History of Kentucky, vol. 1 (1922), p. 3. “Sipu in that tongue means river”; the Delaware traditions, “Namaesi-sipu,” Fish River; “The name of the river gave name to the State of Mississippi”; the rejected meanings and “it is erroneous and wrong to contend that the Indian name carried any such meaning.”
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 210. “Mississippi; State of the Union, counties in Arkansas and Missouri, and the largest river in the United States. An Indian word meaning ‘great river,’ or ‘gathering in of all the waters,’ and ‘an almost endless river spread out.’”
• U.S. Census Bureau, state codes (2020). Lists Mississippi’s permanent federal place-name record number (GNIS 1779790).