State nicknames of all 50 states

Landscape, crops and animals

Most nicknames describe the land. Some name its scenery or climate, like the Sunshine State, the Evergreen State, the Green Mountain State and the Mountain State. Others name a plant: the Sunflower State, the Bluegrass State, the Magnolia State, the Peach State and the Pine Tree State. Rock and minerals gave New Hampshire the Granite State and Nevada the Silver State, after the silver boom that followed the Comstock Lode discovery in 1859.

Animals supply a surprising number, and the stories behind them are rarely what you would expect. Wisconsin is the Badger State not because of badgers but because lead miners of the late 1820s lived in old shafts and dugouts, like badgers in burrows. Minnesota’s Gopher State goes back to an 1857 cartoon that drew railroad promoters as gophers with human heads pulling a train. Alabama’s Yellowhammer State comes from the Civil War, when Alabama troops in homespun uniforms dyed a yellowish color were likened to the yellowhammer, a woodpecker.

History and pride

Many nicknames claim a place in the nation’s story. Delaware is the First State because it was the first to ratify the Constitution, on December 7, 1787; a first-grade class asked for the official designation in 2002. Pennsylvania, in the middle of the thirteen original states, is the Keystone State, after the central stone that locks an arch. Connecticut calls itself the Constitution State after the Fundamental Orders of 1638-39, which some historians have called the first written constitution, a claim others dispute. Wyoming is the Equality State because in 1869 it became the first territory to give women the vote, and it kept that right when it joined the Union.

War left its mark too. Tennessee became the Volunteer State when thousands answered the governor’s call for volunteers in the War of 1812. Maryland’s Old Line State may honor the Maryland Line, its regular troops in the Revolution. Nevada’s “Battle Born,” on its flag, recalls that it joined the Union during the Civil War.

Some of the proudest names started as insults. The Sooners were settlers who slipped into Oklahoma’s Unassigned Lands before the 1889 Land Run officially began; the label turned into a badge of honor after the University of Oklahoma took it for its football team in 1908. “Tar Heel” began as a jibe at North Carolina soldiers during the Civil War, and its earliest known written use is in an 1863 soldier’s diary. Maryland’s Free State was popularized in the 1920s by a Baltimore newspaper editor mocking Prohibition supporters.

Nicknames on license plates

Many nicknames became famous, and some became official, because they went on license plates. North Dakota put “Peace Garden State” on its plates in 1956, and it proved so popular that the Legislative Assembly made it the official nickname the next year. Florida’s plates first carried “Sunshine State” in 1949, although no law adopting it as the official nickname can be found, and New Mexico’s have carried “Land of Enchantment” since 1941. In New Jersey, a 1954 law put “Garden State” on license plates over the governor’s veto. Rhode Island’s “Ocean State,” adopted in 1971, is officially the license plate nickname.

Tourism and promotion supplied others. Montana’s Treasure State first appeared on an 1895 promotional booklet about its gold, silver and copper, and the state took up “Big Sky Country” in 1961 with permission from A. B. Guthrie Jr., whose novel The Big Sky supplied the phrase. Arkansas’s state parks began promoting “The Natural State” in the mid-1980s, and the Legislature made it official in 1995.

Changing names

Official nicknames are not permanent. Arkansas has had three: the Wonder State from 1923, the Land of Opportunity from 1953, and the Natural State since 1995. Nebraska was the Tree Planters’ State from 1895, honoring the state where Arbor Day was founded, until the 1945 Legislature replaced it with the Cornhusker State, borrowed from the University of Nebraska teams. South Dakota’s flag read “The Sunshine State” from 1909 until 1992, when the words were changed to “The Mount Rushmore State,” and that became the official nickname.

Origins nobody is sure of

Some nicknames are older than anyone’s records. No one knows where Indiana’s “Hoosier” comes from, Michigan’s “Wolverine” has competing explanations, and the source of New York’s “Empire State” is uncertain, though it was in use by the 1830s, a century before the Empire State Building borrowed it. Connecticut’s “Nutmeg State” is tied to tales of Yankee peddlers selling fake wooden nutmegs, or to buyers who did not know that real nutmegs have to be grated.

The list below gives every state’s nicknames, with the official ones marked and the story behind each.