Rhode Island

A co-worker recently visited family in Rhode Island. Before she left, I assigned her the task of finding out how the state got its name. I didn't care too much about the "Rhode", but I was very interested in learning why it was called an island.

She brought back a newspaper article that provided lots and lots of useful information. Here's a brief summary:

Rhode Island was discovered in 1524 by Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazano. The story is that he saw a similarity between this area and the Greek island of Rhodes. But that's a little silly because the two look nothing alike, as far as I can tell.

The Dutch explorer Adriaen Block, there in 1635, named it Roodt Eylandt or "Red Island", for the color of its soil. It seems likely that this Dutch name evolved into current one, with the spelling influenced by the Greek island name.

The idea that it was an island was apparently just a mistake which the lazy Verrazano or Block could have rectified by the simple expedient of chartering an airplane and confirming that the area was not, in fact, surrounded by water.

Stupid sixteenth and seventeenth century explorers.

I'm still not at all sure why they kept the "Island" part of the name after they discovered their mistake. Perhaps no one has told them.