The story
- Siouan · derived from
- French · borrowed fromArcansas
- English todayArkansas
From the name of the Arkansas River, from French Arcansas, a (plural) designation of either a Siouan tribe or the Quapaw. This designation is sometimes claimed to derive from a Quapaw word *akakaze (“land of downriver people”) or a Lakota/Dakota word *akakaze (“people of the south wind”); more likely, it derives from a Siouan ethnonym cognate to Kansa (whence also the name of the state of Kansas).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.