Tennessee

Tanasi

Tennessee is named for Tanasi, a Cherokee town on the Little Tennessee River in what is now Monroe County, which was the leading political center of the Overhill Cherokee in the early 1700s, before Chota took that role. The secretary of state’s Blue Book adds that the word itself may be older than the Cherokee presence and could have come from the Yuchi, an earlier people of East Tennessee.

The first territory to apply

Before statehood, the region was the Southwest Territory, governed first from Rocky Mount and then from Knoxville. It was the first federal territory to seek admission as a state: it wrote a constitution and organized a state government before applying. After a close, party-line vote, Congress admitted Tennessee as the 16th state on June 1, 1796, and Knoxville became its first state capital.

The Volunteer State

Tennessee’s nickname dates from the War of 1812, when thousands of Tennesseans answered Governor Willie Blount’s call for volunteers, and heavy enlistment in the Mexican War reinforced it. It was written into law in 2020. Older nicknames include the Big Bend State, after the Native name for the Tennessee River, “the river with the big bend,” and the Mother of Southwestern Statesmen, for the presidents and other national leaders the state produced in the 1800s.

Finding a capital

Tennessee’s legislature moved several times in its early decades, among Knoxville, Nashville and Murfreesboro, chosen in 1818 as the state’s geographic center. It settled in Nashville in 1826, and in 1843 the General Assembly made it the permanent capital, after a contest in which Whigs generally backed Nashville and Democrats Murfreesboro. The Greek Revival Capitol, finished in 1859, is one of the oldest working state capitols in the country. The capital page tells the story.

Three stars

The state flag, adopted in 1905, shows three white stars in a blue circle on a crimson field. The stars stand for the state’s three grand divisions, East, Middle and West Tennessee, bound together by the unbroken circle. The motto on the seal is “Agriculture and Commerce,” and since 2023 the state has had a second motto, “Send Me.”

Eighty-eight symbols

Tennessee has 88 official state symbols, more than any other state. The mockingbird is the state bird and the iris the state cultivated flower, and the tulip poplar, whose wood pioneers used for houses and barns, the state tree. The Tennessee Walking Horse, the bluetick coonhound and the raccoon all have titles, as do three foods, hot slaw, Memphis barbecue and Nashville hot chicken, ten official state books and 16 state songs, from “The Tennessee Waltz” and “Rocky Top” to Dolly Parton’s “My Tennessee Mountain Home.” See them all on the Tennessee symbols page.

Land and people

Tennessee covers 42,144 square miles, 36th among the states, and had about 7.32 million residents in 2025, 15th in the country and up nearly 6 percent from 2020. It borders eight states, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Missouri, tied with Missouri for the most of any state. Nashville, with about 721,000 people, is the largest city, followed by Memphis, Knoxville, Chattanooga and Clarksville.