Name of Tennessee

The earliest known written variant of the name that became Tennessee was recorded by Spanish explorer Captain Juan Pardo when he and his men passed through a Native American village named "Tanasqui" in 1567 while traveling inland from modern-day South Carolina.

In the early 18th century, British traders encountered a Cherokee town named Tanasi (or "Tanase", in syllabary: ᏔᎾᏏ) in present-day Monroe County, Tennessee.

Early ethnographer James Mooney asserted in 1902 that the name "can not be analyzed" and its meaning lost.

[2] But more recent research suggests that Cherokees adapted it from an earlier Yuchi word meaning "meeting place".

[3][4] The term bears strong resemblance to other place names at river confluences on early maps, including Tahnisee, Tanasqui, Tunnashe, and others, and to the Yuchi term Tana-tsee-dgee, literally "brother-waters-place" or more roughly, "where-the-waters-meet.