Why do they call it the "Mississippi river" if it runs through more states than just Mississippi?

Smoking Joe

Kind of like the Colorado river.

MARK

The English name Mississippi comes from French Misi zipi. That was how French rendered the Ojibwe name of the river: Misi-ziibi which translates into English as Great River. The state of Mississippi is named after the river not the other way round.

Zhu

Early Euro explorers were not good at getting names. Where the the Mississippi & the Missouri meet, the latter is rather bigger But La Salle (or whomever) was going down the Mississippi & wrote that the Missouri joined the Mississippi & not vice versa.

Laura

Do you not know basic research? Also, it is Mississippi River.

Chewy Ivan 2

Mississippi is what Native Americans called the river. The state was named after the river. The same applies to the Ohio river, too.

yimi

the river was named first

USAFisnumber1

The river came first, then the state. Its name came from the Indian name for "Great River."

John P

The state was named after ("named for" as Americans say) the river, not the other way round. And you will probably get confused when you learn of the "Louisiana Purchase" of land from colonial France by the new USA in 1803. That land area consisted of about the middle third of mainland USA, several times bigger than the present state called "Louisiana".

KaleyK

The Anishinaabe indians, that spoke Ojibwe, named the river, MIsiziibi ... which means "Great River". The French ... one time owners of the Louisiana Territory ..... altered the name to Mississippi to fit their own pronunciation. .

American Noodle

and you thought God planted English speaking whites in the Americas?

Ardeshir

AFAIK, the name "MISSI-SIPPI" means "Great River" in a Native North American language (I think, Algonquin, though I am not certain, not being a native North American myself.) Cheers. +++++

Rain

The Mississippi River is the largest river of the United States and the chief river of the second-largest drainage system on the North American continent. It is also one of the world's most important commercial waterways. The Mississippi River is the second longest river in North America, flowing 2,350 miles from its source at Lake Itasca through the center of the continental United States to the Gulf of Mexico.

busterwasmycat

For a shower thought, it is not very profound. If it is not a shower thought, it is profoundly ignorant. Sorry, but you asked the question which has an obvious answer. The river name predates the existence of the state, even of the entire country USA.

tham153

the river was named first

The First Dragon

They named the State after the river, not the other way around.

Anonymous

Because it is all a hoax dsignd by the govrnment who not only stagd Tupac's death they poison us with Monsanto!

Antiliber

seriously? you do under stand the Natives Named the river that first ,, way before the territory then State was named Mississippi

Moon Shot

The word Mississippi itself comes from Misi zipi, the French rendering of the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe or Algonquin) name for the river, Misi-ziibi (Great River).

Raisin Caine

Same reason that the Ohio river is actually part of many states with the exception of the state of Ohio. The naming of the river came before the states were even formed.

Chicken Wing

That was the name of the river long before the states were established.

GEORGE B

Because that's what the natives called it when the white man arrived.

abraXus

who is "they"? you realize you can just google this, right, mr troll?

Alex

There are cheesy borders.