Arkansas

name

Etymology: 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).

1. A state in the South Central region of the United States. Capital and largest city: Little Rock.
2. A river in the United States, rising in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, and flowing generally southeast over 1,400 miles through Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, where it joins the Mississippi in Desha County.
3. A surname.