How Missouri Got Its Name (and Why "Muddy Water" May Be Wrong)

Missouri is said to mean “muddy water,” but a 1908 history of the state calls the meaning uncertain, and the river’s “muddy water” name was Pekitanou. What’s clear is where it came from: a tribe called the Missouri, who lived near the mouth of the river. From them the name went to the river, then to a territory, and then to the state.

“I never saw anything more terrific”

In 1673, Father Marquette and his companions came down the Mississippi in canoes and reached the mouth of a big river. Louis Houck quotes Marquette in his History of Missouri: “I never saw anything more terrific; a tangle of entire trees, of branches, of floating islands” came pouring out, and “the water was made muddy by it and could not clear itself.”

Houck calls that river by the name Marquette used, the Pekitanoui, “the river of the ‘Oumissouries.’” Houck also quotes a missionary named Marest, writing from Kaskaskia in 1712, who said the river was commonly called “Pekitanou,” that is, “muddy water.” So the river really was muddy, and it really did have a name meaning muddy water. That name was Pekitanou, not Missouri, though as you’ll see, one old theory ties Missouri to muddy water too.

What “Missouri” might mean

Houck opens his first chapter with the problem: “The precise meaning of the name of the state, Missouri, is uncertain.” He thought it was probably a Siouan word. According to Long’s expedition, the people known as the Missouri, who lived at the mouth of the river, were called “Ne-o-ta-cha” or “Ne-o-ge-he,” meaning “those who build a town at the entrance of a river.” Another scholar, McGee, said the exact meaning wasn’t known, but that it might have to do with people drowning in a stream, or come from a word meaning “Smoky Water.”

A traveler named Featherstonhaugh had his own idea. He said the Dakotas called the river “Minnay Shoshoh,” the “Muddy River,” and that Missouri might be a French squeeze of those words. Houck put that in a footnote. Henry Gannett, writing for the U.S. Geological Survey in 1905, passed along the muddy reading with a hedge: “An Indian tribal name said to mean ‘muddy water.’”

Mess-8-ri and Missourits

The spelling moved around too. On Joliet’s map it’s “Mess-8-ri,” where the 8 stands for “ou” in old French writing. Marquette’s map, printed in 1681, has “8-miss-8-ri,” and Franquelin’s map has “Missourits.” Joutel, writing in 1686, already used the spelling you see today.

From the tribe, Houck says, the name “was naturally bestowed on the river,” then on the territory along it, and then “to the first state carved out of its limits.” So if you’ve always heard that Missouri means muddy water, you’re half right: the river was muddy, but the name may say something else.

Sources & further reading

• Louis Houck, A History of Missouri, vol. 1 (1908). “The precise meaning of the name of the state, Missouri, is uncertain”; a probably Siouan word; Long’s “Ne-o-ta-cha” or “Ne-o-ge-he”; McGee, drowning, and “Smoky Water” (p. 1); the footnote on Featherstonhaugh’s “Minnay Shoshoh” and on Marest’s “Pekitanou,” “muddy water,” in 1712 (pp. 1–2); the spellings “Mess-8-ri,” “8-miss-8-ri,” and “Missourits,” Joutel in 1686, and the name passing from the tribe to the river, the territory, and the state (p. 2); the start of Joliet and Marquette’s voyage in 1673 (p. 159); Marquette at the mouth of the Pekitanoui, “the river of the ‘Oumissouries,’” and his description of the muddy water (p. 161).
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 210. “State of the Union, and one of the largest rivers. An Indian tribal name said to mean ‘muddy water.’”
• U.S. Census Bureau, state codes (2020). Lists Missouri’s permanent federal place-name record number (GNIS 1779791).