How Vermont Got Its Name From the Green Mountains

Vermont comes from the French words for “green mountain,” and the mountains got that name for the evergreens that cover their sides and most of their summits. The state took the name in 1777, when it broke away on its own.

Green from the top down

Zadock Thompson, whose big History of Vermont came out in 1842, explains it in his section on the mountains. “The sides, and, in most cases, the summits of the mountains in Vermont,” he writes, “are covered with evergreens, such as spruce, hemlock and fir.”

“On this account,” he goes on, the French “early gave to them the name of Verd Mont, or Green Mountain.” When the settlers set up their own government in 1777, “they adopted this name, contracted by the omission of the letter d, for the name of the new state.”

Henry Gannett, who traced place names for the U.S. Geological Survey, gives the same answer in 1905. The state was “so named because of the appearance of its mountains,” from the French “vert mont, ‘green mountain.’”

A state with two names

Before it was Vermont, the area was called the New Hampshire Grants. New York claimed the land, and in 1776 the settlers’ delegates resolved that they “would not associate with, or submit to, the provincial government of New York.”

So they declared their own state. Thompson quotes the declaration made at Westminster in January 1777. The convention said the Grants were “a free and independent jurisdiction, or state; to be forever hereafter called, known, and distinguished by the name of New Connecticut, alias Vermont.”

Notice the “alias.” For a little while, the new state had two names at once. New Connecticut was the first one listed, but Vermont is the one that stuck.

The doctor in Philadelphia

Who pushed for Vermont? Thompson adds a footnote: “This name is said to have been adopted upon the recommendation of Dr. Thomas Young.” He points you to the part of his book where Young shows up.

Young, he says there, was “a distinguished citizen of Philadelphia” who had “long taken a deep interest in the affairs of the New Hampshire grants.” On April 11, 1777, Young wrote them a letter about forming a government. He addressed it “To the Inhabitants of Vermont, a Free and Independent State, bounding on the River Connecticut and Lake Champlain.” Thompson prints the letter, signed and dated, with a postscript from the next day.

Keep the “said to have been” in mind. Thompson doesn’t show Young picking the name, only that the story says so. What the letter does show is Young using “Vermont” in the spring of 1777.

A preacher’s tall tale

There’s one more story, and Thompson quotes it without signing on. The Rev. Samuel Peters, in a book published in New York in 1807, claimed he named the mountains himself. “Verd-Mont was a name given to the Green Mountains in October, 1763, by the Rev. Dr. Peters,” it begins. Peters says he stood on a rock on a mountain “then named Mount Pisgah,” with a view of Lake Champlain to the west and the Connecticut River to the east, and christened the land with a bottle of spirits.

It makes a fun picture. Thompson wasn’t buying it, though. He says the name had been used for the mountains “long previous” to Peters’s ceremony, “if, indeed, it ever took place,” and later in the same book he gives the trip as 1768, not 1763. His own explanation is the French one, and that’s the one Gannett backs too. So when you see the Green Mountains, you’re looking at the state’s name in plain English.

Sources & further reading

• Zadock Thompson, History of Vermont, Natural, Civil, and Statistical, in Three Parts (Burlington, 1842), part 1, p. 4; part 2, pp. 50, 105–106, 194. Part 1: “The sides, and, in most cases, the summits of the mountains in Vermont, are covered with evergreens, such as spruce, hemlock and fir. On this account the French, being the first civilized people who visited this part of the world, early gave to them the name of Verd Mont, or Green Mountain; and when the inhabitants of the New Hampshire Grants assumed the powers of government, in 1777, they adopted this name, contracted by the omission of the letter d, for the name of the new state”; note: “This name is said to have been adopted upon the recommendation of Dr. Thomas Young (see part 2d, page 106)”; Peters’s account, “published at New York in 1807”: “Verd-Mont was a name given to the Green Mountains in October, 1763, by the Rev. Dr. Peters,” on “a high mountain, then named Mount Pisgah,” in sight of “lake Champlain at the west, and of Connecticut river at the east”; “he received a bottle of spirits from Col. Taplin”; “There is no doubt that the name Verd Mont had been applied to this range of mountains long previous to the above transaction, (if, indeed, it ever took place;)” (p. 4). Part 2: the declaration of January 1777 at Westminster, “a free and independent jurisdiction, or state; to be forever hereafter called, known, and distinguished by the name of New Connecticut, alias Vermont” (p. 50); the Dorset convention of July 1776 resolved that they “would not associate with, or submit to, the provincial government of New York” (p. 50); Dr. Thomas Young, “a distinguished citizen of Philadelphia,” who “had long taken a deep interest in the affairs of the New Hampshire grants” (p. 105); his letter “To the Inhabitants of Vermont, a Free and Independent State, bounding on the River Connecticut and Lake Champlain,” Philadelphia, April 11, 1777 (p. 106); Samuel Peters “tells us” he “was the first clergyman who visited ‘Verd Mont,’” dating it “October, 1768” (p. 194).
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 310. “Vermont; State of the Union, so named because of the appearance of its mountains. Derived from the French vert mont, ‘green mountain.’”
• U.S. Census Bureau, state codes (2020). Lists Vermont’s permanent federal place-name record number (GNIS 1779802).