Naming The New State Print Share
When the Congress of the United States granted territorial status on 9 September 1850, the name Nuevo México, or New Mexico, had been used to describe this area of the Southwest for more than two hundred and seventy years. But between 1850 and 1912, as New Mexico sought to become a state, the Congress tinkered with renaming it. Seven separate suggestions for what to call New Mexico were proposed, and the goal was to break any link in people’s mind between Old Mexico and the new state.
Jefferson and Lincoln were repeatedly suggested, but only the nation’s first president, Washington, is honored by a state’s name; however, seven other states are named for kings or queens. Indigenous languages of the Americas have contributed twenty-four state names, and at least two native words were proposed for New Mexico during the quest for statehood: Montezuma and Acoma. The former was included in legislation on statehood introduced in 1888, and it took a concerted effort to defeat it. Supporters of substituting Acoma included one of the Territory’s last delegates to the House of Representatives, Bernard S. Rodey, and his fondness for the proposed change aroused heated opposition. The Spanish words for salty, salado, and for mountain range, sierra, also were candidates, but neither had any serious support.
The only proposed name that came close to being adopted was Arizona. In late June 1906 the Congress passed legislation signed by President Theodore Roosevelt to unite the territories of Arizona and New Mexico. For more than four years President Roosevelt had favored such a merger, which would make Santa Fe the capital, allot 67 of the 100 legislators to the former New Mexico, but in exchange the new joint state would be known as Arizona. This designation bitterly disappointed New Mexicans, but in early November they voted in favor of joint statehood. Arizona resoundingly rejected it, ending the last significant effort at renaming.
At statehood, New Mexico/Nuevo México added the oldest name recognized universally and used continuously to describe an area admitted to the Union.
--David Holtby