Connecticut

The Constitution State

Connecticut’s official nickname points back to its earliest years. In 1638 and 1639 the river towns of Hartford, Windsor and Wethersfield adopted the Fundamental Orders, a written plan of government for the colony. In the 1800s the historian John Fiske and others called it the first written constitution, and Connecticut has embraced the idea ever since; the legislature made “the Constitution State” official in 1959. Some modern historians dispute the “first” claim, but the nickname has stuck. Connecticut also lived up to it in 1788, when a state convention in Hartford ratified the US Constitution by 128 votes to 40, making Connecticut the fifth state.

Nutmegs, provisions and steady habits

Connecticut has collected more nicknames than most states. “The Nutmeg State” recalls the Yankee peddlers who carried Connecticut goods across early America. One story says some of them sold fake nutmegs carved from wood. Another says the nutmegs were real, but customers who did not know to grate them thought they had been cheated. “The Provisions State” comes from the Revolutionary War, when Connecticut supplied so much food and cannon to the Continental Army that George Washington often turned to Governor Jonathan Trumbull for help. And “the Land of Steady Habits” refers to the strict morals and conservative customs of its people.

A long river and a hidden charter

The name Connecticut comes from the Connecticut River, which runs down the middle of the state. The state traces it to the Mohegan word Quinnehtukqut, “long river place” or “beside the long tidal river.” English colonists founded their first towns along its banks in the 1630s.

Connecticut’s most famous story involves a tree. In 1662 the colony received a royal charter from King Charles II that gave it unusual freedom to govern itself. In 1687 Sir Edmund Andros arrived to take it back. During a candle-lit meeting the charter disappeared, and by tradition it was hidden in a large white oak in Hartford, which became known as the Charter Oak. The tree fell in a storm in 1856, but the white oak is now the state tree, and the oak appears on the state quarter.

Two capitals for 174 years

From 1701 Connecticut had two capitals. The General Assembly met in Hartford in May and in New Haven in October, an arrangement that lasted through the Revolution and most of the 1800s. In 1873, tired of paying for two statehouses, the legislature voted for a single capital, Hartford outbid New Haven, and a constitutional amendment made it official in 1875. The capital page tells the story.

Symbols from whales to lollipops

Connecticut has 35 official symbols. The mountain laurel has been the state flower since 1907 and the American robin the state bird since 1943. The state animal is the sperm whale, chosen in 1975 for Connecticut’s whaling past, when ships from New London and Mystic hunted it across the oceans. The state ship is the USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, built in Groton. Connecticut also names a state hero, Nathan Hale, and a state heroine, Prudence Crandall, who opened a school for Black girls in 1833. Newer additions include the Siberian Husky, the University of Connecticut’s mascot, and the lollipop, both in 2024, and in 2026 the spring peeper and Housatonic marble. See every symbol on the Connecticut symbols page.

The flag shows three grapevines on a white shield above the motto Qui transtulit sustinet, Latin for “He who transplanted still sustains,” a motto that has appeared on Connecticut’s seals since 1639.

Land and people

Connecticut is small: at 5,543 square miles it is the third smallest state, after Rhode Island and Delaware. It is also crowded, with about 3.69 million residents in 2025 and the fourth highest population density in the country. It borders New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and its southern coast faces Long Island Sound. Its largest city is not its capital: Bridgeport is the largest, followed by Stamford, New Haven and Hartford.