Many places throughout
Alabama take their names from the languages of the indigenous
Native American/American Indian tribes. The following list includes settlements, geographic features, and political subdivisions whose names are derived from these indigenous languages. The primary Native American peoples present in Alabama during historical times included the
Alibamu,
Cherokee,
Chickasaw,
Choctaw,
Koasati, and the lower and upper
Muscogee (Creeks).[1]
With the exception of the Cherokee, all of the historical Alabama tribes speak
Muskogean languages. There are competing classification systems, but the traditionally accepted usage divides the dialects into Eastern Muskogean (Alibamu, Koasatia, and Muscogee) and Western Muskogean (Chickasaw and Choctaw).[2] The
Cherokee language belongs to the separate
Iroquoian language family.[3]
Listings
State
Alabama – named for the
Alibamu, a tribe whose name derives from a
Choctaw phrase meaning "thicket-clearers"[4] or "plant-cutters" (from albah, "(medicinal) plants", and amo, "to clear").[5]
Tibbie - a shortened form of the Choctaw word "oakibbeha". Oakibbeha means "blocks of ice therein," with okti meaning "ice" and the plural form abeha meaning "to be in".[34]
Tuscumbia - from the Choctaw words tashka (warrior) and abi (killer).[1]
Tuskegee – from the Koasati phrase tasquiqui, meaning "warriors".[35]
Uchee – named after the
Yuchi people, whose name roughly translates to mean "sitting at a distance".[36]
^Rufus Ward (February 27, 2010).
"Tombigbee River: What does it mean?". The Commercial Dispatch. The Columbus Lowndes Public Library. Retrieved 8 April 2011.
Owen, Thomas McAdory; Owen, Marie Bankhead (1921). History of Alabama and dictionary of Alabama biography, Volume 1. Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Company.
Read, William A. (1984). Indian Place Names in Alabama.
Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press. p. 15.
ISBN0-8173-0231-X.