South Carolina's Name: Which King Charles Was It?

In 1562, the French captain Jean Ribault left 26 men at Fort Charles on the South Carolina coast, and an 1897 history says Carolina’s name starts there. A 1905 federal place-name book gives the credit to English kings named Charles instead.

Port Royal and Fort Charles

Edward McCrady, vice president of the Historical Society of South Carolina, tells the French side in his 1897 History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government. Admiral Coligny, leader of the Huguenot party in France, got permission from King Charles IX to start a colony, and Ribault sailed with two of the king’s ships. On April 30, 1562, he reached the coast, and he landed at a river he named the May, since he found it on the first of that month. It’s now the St. Johns in Florida. Then he worked north. On May 27 he anchored at “a spacious bay,” three leagues wide, at the mouth of “a noble river, which he named Port Royal.”

Ribault took possession “in the name of his king and of his country” and set up a stone pillar with the French arms on an island that’s believed to be today’s Lemon Island, McCrady writes. He left 26 volunteers behind under Captain Albert de la Pierria. On June 11, as Ribault’s ships left, they “fired a salute to Fort Charles, as they had named the fort they had built.” Then civil war broke out in France, and Ribault’s return was delayed.

In 1564 the French tried again under Laudonnière, who skipped the abandoned Fort Charles and built Fort Caroline on the May River, in Florida. The Spanish wiped it out. McCrady’s verdict on the whole effort is short. The settlement at Port Royal “gave to the whole region the name of Carolina in honor of Charles IX of France,” he writes, and “these names are all that remain of Ribault’s enterprise.”

A name that “soon disappeared”

Henry Gannett, writing for the U.S. Geological Survey in 1905, tells you the same start and a different ending. Yes, Ribault named the region Carolina for Charles IX, “but the name never came into general use and soon disappeared.” The name came back, Gannett says, about 1628, this time “in honor of Charles I of England,” for the land between Virginia and Florida.

McCrady writes about that English chapter too. He says that as early as February 10, 1629, French Protestant refugees in England were talking with Charles I about planting a colony “in what is now South Carolina,” and that in 1630 Charles I granted Sir Robert Heath “all the territory known as Carolina.” No colony came of it.

Charles II and the south side of Cape Fear

Then came a third Charles. By a patent dated March 24, 1663, McCrady writes, Charles II rewarded eight of his supporters by “granting them the province of Carolina.” Gannett says this province was named for the reigning king, “and thus the old name given in honor of Charles I was retained.”

Which version weighs more? Gannett’s, but only by a little. The oldest English record either book quotes, a London manuscript dated February 10, 1629–30, already says “Carolina,” and McCrady ties that same date to French refugees talking with Charles I about a colony. Neither book shows anyone using Ribault’s name in the decades before that. Still, that manuscript doesn’t say which Charles the name was for, and Gannett doesn’t quote one that does, so you can’t call it settled.

The “South” came later, and slowly. McCrady says governors of the southern part were usually commissioned for “that part of the province which lies south and west of Cape Fear,” and after 1699 its laws usually named the assembly “now met at Charles Town for the South West part of this province.” Around the time Philip Ludwell was made governor of the northern part in 1689, he says, the titles North and South Carolina “began to be used in some official papers,” even though the province hadn’t been split. So whichever book you trust, South Carolina’s name honors a King Charles. The books just don’t agree on which one.

Sources & further reading

• Edward McCrady, The History of South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, 1670–1719 (1897). McCrady as vice president of the Historical Society of South Carolina (title page); Coligny, Charles IX, and Ribault’s two ships; April 30, 1562, and the River May, “now known as the St. John’s River in Florida”; May 27, “a spacious bay,” three leagues wide, and “a noble river, which he named Port Royal” (p. 44); possession “in the name of his king and of his country,” the stone pillar on what is “believed to be” Lemon Island, the 26 volunteers under Captain Albert de la Pierria, June 11, 1562, “fired a salute to Fort Charles, as they had named the fort they had built,” and the civil war that delayed his return (p. 45); Laudonnière’s voyage of 1564, which did not visit the abandoned Fort Charles (p. 47); Fort Caroline on the May River and its destruction by the Spanish under Menendez; Port Royal “gave to the whole region the name of Carolina in honor of Charles IX of France”; “These names are all that remain of Ribault’s enterprise” (p. 48); the refugees and Charles I, “as early as the 10th of February, 1629,” and the grant of 1630 to Robert Heath “of all the territory known as Carolina; but no colony was established under it” (p. 49); the first English colony “in what is now South Carolina” came under “the charters of 1663-65 of Charles II” (p. 50); the Heath patent declared void on August 12, 1663 (p. 55); the patent of March 24, 1663, “granting them the province of Carolina” (p. 56); “the titles of North and South Carolina now began to be used in some official papers,” and the footnote on commissions “south and west of Cape Fear” and the usual form after 1699 naming the assembly “now met at Charles Town for the South West part of this province” (p. 235).
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), pp. 69–70. Ribault named the region Carolina “in honor of his king, Charles IX of France, but the name never came into general use and soon disappeared”; about 1628, “in honor of Charles I of England”; the province of 1663, “named in honor of the reigning king, and thus the old name given in honor of Charles I was retained.”
• U.S. Census Bureau, state codes (2020). Lists South Carolina’s permanent federal place-name record number (GNIS 1779799).