How North Dakota Got Its Name (and Almost Became Pembina)

North Dakota is named for the Dakota people, whose name for themselves is usually translated as “allies,” and the north half of the territory picked “North Dakota” over the other option on the table, Pembina. The people who wanted it had a practical reason, too. By the 1880s, “Dakota” was famous for wheat, and the big farms were in the north.

Where the name comes from

The word goes back to the Dakota themselves. Stephen Riggs, a missionary whose dictionary of the language the federal government published in 1890, defines dakota as “feeling affection for, friendly.” The Smithsonian’s Handbook of American Indians (1907) puts it as “allies,” and says Dakota, Nakota and Lakota are the same name in three dialects. The U.S. Geological Survey’s 1905 place-name book says both Dakotas were “named for the Indian tribe.”

Congress created Dakota Territory on March 2, 1861. One territory covered both of today’s states, and for almost 30 years they shared one name. We tell the southern half of that story in How South Dakota Got Its Name.

The name that lost: Pembina

The north spent years trying to split off, and for a while it looked like it might be called Pembina. Pembina was already the name of an old trading post and of the nearby hills. According to Clement Lounsberry, whose history of the state came out in 1917, the word comes from a Chippewa name for a red berry, the one settlers called the high-bush cranberry.

As early as 1873, Lounsberry writes, Senator Ramsey of Minnesota introduced a bill for a northern territory “to be known as Pembina.” It failed. In 1875, another Minnesota senator, Windom, tried again with a bill for the “Territory of North Dakota.” The Senate passed it, and it died in a House committee. Doane Robinson’s 1904 history of South Dakota tells it a little differently: he says it was a Pembina bill that passed the Senate, in August 1876, and got killed in the House. The two old histories don’t line up on that detail.

Either way, Lounsberry says Pembina had a problem. Critics called the word “insignificant,” and when a usually well-informed congressman said it out loud as “Pembyny,” the efforts behind it stopped.

Why “North Dakota” won

Lounsberry had a hand in this himself. Early in 1882, he was editing the Bismarck Tribune, and the paper started printing “North Dakota” in its dateline. From then on, he writes, the people who wanted that name were united behind it.

Their reasoning was mostly about reputation. Dakota had become known for its wheat fields, and the most famous farms were in the northern part of the territory. Keeping “Dakota” in the name meant keeping that reputation.

Twins, by design

In 1889, Congress split the territory along what Lounsberry calls the seventh standard parallel, a surveyors’ line, and both halves became states. On November 2, 1889, President Benjamin Harrison signed the two proclamations of admission. According to Doane Robinson’s Encyclopedia of South Dakota (1925), his private secretary slid both papers under a newspaper and shuffled them until he couldn’t tell which was which, so the president could sign without anyone knowing which came first. That’s why nobody can say which Dakota is older.

Sources & further reading

• Clement A. Lounsberry, North Dakota History and People, vol. 1 (1917). The origin of the name Pembina, the “Pembyny” episode, the 1882 Bismarck Tribune dateline and the wheat-field argument (p. 41); the Organic Act of March 2, 1861, the 1873 Pembina bill and the 1875 North Dakota bill (pp. 365–366). Lounsberry was a newspaperman and a player in the story, and he dates North Dakota’s admission to October 1889, which doesn’t match the November 2 date in other sources.
• Stephen R. Riggs, A Dakota-English Dictionary (1890). Defines dakota as “feeling affection for, friendly.”
• Frederick Webb Hodge, ed., Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Part 1 (1907), entry “Dakota.” Translates the name as “allies” and explains Dakota, Nakota and Lakota.
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 98. Both Dakotas “named for the Indian tribe.”
• Doane Robinson, History of South Dakota, vol. 1 (1904). Says the Senate passed a bill to create “Pembina territory” from northern Dakota in August 1876 and the House defeated it.
• Doane Robinson’s Encyclopedia of South Dakota (1925), entry “South Dakota, Admission of,” p. 673. The shuffled proclamations of November 2, 1889, and Secretary of State James G. Blaine’s telegram to the two governors.
• U.S. Census Bureau, state codes (2020). Lists North Dakota’s permanent federal place-name record number (GNIS 1779797).