Texas

Friends

The name Texas comes from a word used by the Hasinai and allied Caddo peoples of East Texas, meaning “friends” or “allies,” which they also used as a greeting. Spanish visitors wrote it down in many spellings, among them tejas, tayshas and texias. After Damián Massanet’s expedition of 1689 the Spanish mistook it for the name of a great kingdom, then applied it to a group of tribes and eventually to the whole province. Later suggestions that it means “land of flowers,” “paradise” or “tiled roofs” have no support in the documents of the time. In 1930 Texas adopted “Friendship” as its state motto, echoing the original meaning.

A republic, then a state

Texas was part of Spanish and then Mexican territory before it broke away. In 1836 a convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos declared independence, and the Republic of Texas governed itself for almost a decade. In 1845 it was annexed by a joint resolution of Congress, and President James K. Polk signed the act admitting Texas as the 28th state on December 29, 1845. The reverse of the state seal recalls that history: the Alamo, the Gonzales cannon and Vince’s Bridge, ringed by the six flags that have flown over Texas, with “Remember the Alamo” above.

Austin

The young republic moved its capital several times, from Washington-on-the-Brazos to Harrisburg, Galveston, Velasco, Columbia and Houston. In 1839 a commission chose a site on the Colorado River around the hamlet of Waterloo, which became Austin. Fear of a Mexican attack led President Sam Houston to move the government away in 1842, and his attempt to take the archives from Austin set off the so-called Archives War, but Austin was the capital again by statehood and won statewide votes in 1850 and 1872. Its red granite Capitol, finished in 1888, is taller than the US Capitol. The capital page tells the story.

The Lone Star

Texas’s single star has been its emblem since the Republic. The Burnet flag of 1836 put a gold star on a blue field, and the Lone Star Flag adopted on January 25, 1839, became the national flag of the Republic and later the state flag. “The Lone Star State” was in use for nearly two centuries before it became the official nickname in 2015.

Bluebonnets, mockingbirds and pecans

Texas has 80 official state symbols, one of the longest lists in the country. The bluebonnet, adopted in 1901, was the first. The northern mockingbird followed as state bird in 1927, and the pecan, which grows wild in the river valleys of most of the state, has been the state tree since 1919. Texas splits its state mammal in two: the longhorn is the large state mammal and the armadillo the small one. Chili is the state dish, and the list runs on through the cowboy boot and cowboy hat, the guitar, rodeo, the chuck wagon and the Battleship Texas. See them all on the Texas symbols page.

Land and people

Texas covers 268,596 square miles, second only to Alaska, and had about 31.7 million residents in 2025, second only to California, up nearly 9 percent from 2020. It borders New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, faces the Gulf to the southeast and shares its southern border with Mexico. Houston, with about 2.4 million people, is the largest city, followed by San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth and Austin, all with more than a million residents.