The story
From earlier Ouragon (1765), of obscure origin. Various etymologies have been proposed: * A clipping of French Ouariconsint, itself a corruption of Ouisconsin(g) (“Wisconsin”) * Borrowing from French ouragan (“hurricane”) * Borrowing from Abenaki wligen (“good”), cf. Algonquin wauregan (“beautiful”) * Borrowing from Shoshone ogoe (“river”) + paanangkwa (“west”) * Borrowing from Chinook Jargon ulakan (“candlefish”) * Borrowing from Spanish orégano (“marjoram”) See Wikipedia article on the toponym Oregon for more information.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.