THE NAME:
It's said that a mining speculator named Charles D. Poston first suggested the
name Arizona in a petition to the United States Congress to make Arizona a legal
territory.
The name, Arizona, is derived from a combination of two words from the Papago
Indian dialect of the Pima language; "Aleh" and "Zon" together
as "Aleh-zon" meaning "little spring." The "little spring",
located in Mexican territory, is near a large silver discovery made in Arizona
Creek. Other names suggested
in 1854, when the inhabitants of the area petitioned the U.S. Congress for territorial
recognition, were Pimeria and Gadsonia. According to Thomas Edwin Farish's History
of Arizona printed in 1915, Arizona was selected because it sounded the best.
Pimeria was in reference to the land
of the Pima Indians of the region.
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