Arkansas, Kansas and Missouri are borrowed from Native American languages, not necessarily native to the place, because those were all at one time destinations for eastern Nations being transported west.
The Arizona explanation sounds like it would make sense, if English had been the language used, but it wasn't.
More than half the state names have been borrowed from native languages, not necessarily descriptive or the names the people called themselves.
Most of the place names (states, cities, towns, rivers) in the US are either derived from place names in the Old World (New York, New Hampshire), are named after someone (Georgia, Maryland, Virginia), or are bastardizations of native words or names (Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi).
* This post was
edited 08/12/12 12:39am by grant135b *
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