That’s my favorite. Plus, the way it can be read as “Ohenno” or Oh hell no. Columbia on the West Coast is also a neat idea, considering that Columbia was the manufactured goddess designed to be an avatar for American greatness, before we got the Statue of Liberty. Columbia still has a big statue on top of the Capitol building in DC that never gets mentioned.
Oooo, you're right. I originally had (north–south) Washington → Columbia → Oregon but then realized that Oregon's shape was second and so lazily swapped the two names. Cool to know!
The word “Arkansas” came from the Quapaw Indians, by way of early French explorers. ... The state’s name has been spelled several ways throughout history. In Marquette and Joliet’s Journal of 1673, the Indian name is spelled AKANSEA. In LaSalle’s map a few years later, it’s spelled ACANSA. A map based on the journey of La Harpe in 1718-1722 refers to the river as the ARKANSAS and to the Indians as LES AKANSAS. In about 1811, Captain Zebulon Pike, a noted explorer, spelled it ARKANSAW.
