Oklahoma

Red people

Oklahoma’s name is Choctaw. It comes from two words, okla, meaning people, and humma, meaning red, so it amounts to “red people” or “land of the red people.” The Choctaw delegate Rev. Allen Wright put the name forward, spelled Oklahumma, after the Civil War, when representatives of the Five Tribes were negotiating with federal officials, proposing it for a territory covering their lands. The name was later given to Oklahoma Territory and then to the state.

Land runs and Sooners

Oklahoma’s nickname comes from its land runs. “Sooners” were settlers who slipped into the Unassigned Lands before the official start of the Land Run of April 22, 1889, in violation of the so-called sooner clause of the Indian Appropriation Act. The label was an insult at first, but after the University of Oklahoma adopted it for its football team in 1908 it turned into a point of pride, and by the 1920s Oklahomans had embraced it. It has never been made official by law.

Two territories, one state

By the early 1900s there were two territories: Oklahoma Territory, organized in 1890 with its capital at Guthrie, and Indian Territory, the lands of the Five Tribes and others. The Oklahoma Enabling Act, signed by President Theodore Roosevelt on June 16, 1906, joined them, and Oklahoma entered the Union as the 46th state on November 16, 1907. The Great Seal records the union: a large star holds the old territorial seal, with the emblems of the Chickasaw, Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole nations on its five rays. The motto at its center is Labor omnia vincit, “Labor conquers all things.”

The capital fight

Guthrie stayed the capital at statehood, and the Enabling Act said it should remain there for some years. But Oklahoma City had long been its rival, and in June 1910 voters chose Oklahoma City in a statewide election. Governor Charles N. Haskell had the state seal taken there at once. The fight went to court and all the way to the US Supreme Court, which in 1911 struck down the Enabling Act’s clause tying the capital to Guthrie. The capital page tells the story, including the Capitol that waited 85 years for its dome.

A flag of peace

The state flag, adopted in 1925, shows an Osage warrior’s buckskin shield on a blue field, crossed by a peace pipe and an olive branch. It replaced a red flag with a white star and the number 46, which was seldom flown and became a liability during the Red Scare after World War I.

Mistletoe, scissortails and a state meal

Oklahoma has 58 official state symbols, one of the longest lists in the country. The oldest is mistletoe, the floral emblem since territorial days in 1893; the state flower is the Oklahoma Rose, a red hybrid tea, and the state wildflower the Indian blanket. The scissor-tailed flycatcher, with its long forked tail, is the state bird, the redbud the state tree and the American bison the state animal. Oklahoma also has an official state meal, from chicken-fried steak and fried okra to pecan pie, an official steak, the ribeye, and songs ranging from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” to Woody Guthrie’s “Oklahoma Hills” and the Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize??” See them all on the Oklahoma symbols page.

Land and people

Oklahoma covers 69,899 square miles, 20th among the states, and had about 4.12 million residents in 2025, 28th in the country and up about 4 percent from 2020. It borders six states: Kansas and Colorado to the north, Missouri and Arkansas to the east, Texas to the south and New Mexico to the west. Oklahoma City, with about 720,000 people, is the largest city, followed by Tulsa, Norman, Broken Arrow and Edmond.