How Tennessee Got Its Name From a Cherokee Town

The oldest mention of Tennessee that J. G. M. Ramsey could find was Tenassee, the Cherokee town a crown was brought from in 1730. Ramsey, whose Annals of Tennessee came out in 1853, says that town later gave its name to the Tennessee River and to the state.

A crown from Tenassee

In April 1730, Ramsey writes, Sir Alexander Cumming, sent by Britain to make the Cherokees allies, met the chiefs of all their towns at Nequassee. They knelt and promised loyalty to King George, and Cumming named Moytoy of Telliquo their head chief. Then “the crown was brought from Tenassee, their chief town,” along with “five eagle tails and four scalps of their enemies,” for Cumming to lay at the king’s feet.

Ramsey adds a footnote that’s the reason he’s in this story: “This is the first place in any of the authorities we have consulted, that Tenassee is mentioned.” The town, he says, stood on the west bank of the Little Tennessee River, a few miles above the mouth of the Tellico, “and afterwards gave the name to Tennessee river and to the state.”

From a town to a whole river

The name didn’t start out covering the big river. John Haywood’s history, first published in 1823, says the old French-era maps put the “Tanses or Tanasees” on the river south of the Holston, and called the Big Tennessee below it the “Ho-go-hee-gee.” Ramsey had it differently: he says the Hogohegee was the Holston, and that the Little Tennessee was the “Tannassee.” William Elsey Connelley, in a 1922 history of Kentucky, points to Bartram, who crossed Cherokee country between 1773 and 1778 and listed towns “on the Tanase or Cherokee River.” If Bartram’s wording is right, Connelley says, the name had already spread from the Little Tennessee to the whole river.

What does the word mean? Henry Gannett, whose 1905 book on place names was published by the U.S. Geological Survey, says it’s Cherokee, the name of several old towns of that tribe, but that it “has lost its meaning, attempted interpretations being purely fanciful.” You’ll still run into translations. Connelley quotes King’s Handbook of the United States saying the word means “a Curved Spoon” or “A Bend in the River,” and that the name went to the state “upon motion of Andrew Jackson.” Connelley didn’t buy the spoon, and he thought the meaning of Tanase “is probably lost for all time.” Ramsey heard the Jackson story too, but he calls it a tradition, and none of these books shows a record of it, so treat it as a story, not a fact.

Franklin, Frankland, and finally Tennessee

Before there was a Tennessee, settlers there tried a state of their own, called Franklin, from 1784 to 1788. Ramsey says almost every paper he read spelled it “Franklin,” with one exception: a 1787 letter from General William Cocke dated “State of Frankland.” At the Franklin convention, Cocke had backed a “Constitution of the State of Frankland” that was rejected.

Later the land became the “Territory of the United States South-west of the River Ohio.” Then, on February 6, 1796, a convention that had been meeting at Knoxville since January 11 agreed to form “a free and independent State, by the name of the State of Tennessee,” Haywood writes, and Congress passed an act admitting it that same year. Ramsey adds that the delegates from Tennessee County agreed to give up their county’s name if it went to the whole state, and that the convention took the name of the main river “in preference to others that were spoken of.” So you could say the state was named by a convention, but the oldest mention Ramsey could find goes back to that crown from Tenassee in 1730.

Sources & further reading

• J. G. M. Ramsey, The Annals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century (1853). Sir Alexander Cumming, the meeting at Nequassee in April 1730, Moytoy of Telliquo, the crown “brought from Tenassee, their chief town,” with “five eagle tails and four scalps,” and the footnote: “This is the first place in any of the authorities we have consulted, that Tenassee is mentioned,” on the Little Tennessee above the mouth of Tellico, “and afterwards gave the name to Tennessee river and to the state” (pp. 46–47); the Little Tennessee as the “Tannassee” and the Holston as the Hogohegee (p. 87); General Cocke’s letter dated “State of Frankland” and the rejected “Constitution of the State of Frankland” (p. 387); the “tradition” that General Jackson suggested the name, the consent of the members from Tennessee County, and the river’s name chosen “in preference to others” (p. 655). The title page gives the dates of the State of Franklin (1784 to 1788) and the territory (1790 to 1796).
• John Haywood, The Civil and Political History of the State of Tennessee (1823; 1891 reprint). The old maps, the “Tanses or Tanasees,” and the “Ho-go-hee-gee” (p. 39); the convention at Knoxville from January 11, 1796, the “Territory of the United States South-west of the River Ohio” and the decision of February 6, “by the name of the State of Tennessee” (pp. 484–485); the act of Congress for admission (p. 485).
• William Elsey Connelley and E. M. Coulter, History of Kentucky, vol. 1 (1922), pp. 3–4. Ramsey’s Tanassee as the source of the river’s and the state’s name (p. 3); Bartram, who crossed Cherokee country between 1773 and 1778, and “the Tanase or Cherokee River”; King’s Handbook’s “Curved Spoon” or “Bend in the River” and the claim about Andrew Jackson, which Connelley quotes, with his view that the meaning “is probably lost for all time” (p. 4).
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 298. “The word is of Cherokee origin, being the name of several former settlements of that tribe, but has lost its meaning, attempted interpretations being purely fanciful.”
• U.S. Census Bureau, state codes (2020). Lists Tennessee’s permanent federal place-name record number (GNIS 1325873).