This Sunday, March 15, 2020, is the 200th anniversary of Maine becoming a state! However, there is one mystery about Maine that has yet to be solved. Where did the name come from?
Some historians theorize that it was named Maine by the French who first settled here in 1604. However, at that time, they called the area “Acadia,” which continues to be a place name in Maine. There is no mention in these early records of it being called Maine by Samuel de Champlain and his fellow explorers.
In fact, the name Maine doesn’t appear in writing until 1622 in a royal charter by the Council of New England which granted the land to Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Captain John Mason. Some historians speculate that it was given this name in honor of Henrietta Maria, who was the wife of King Charles and purportedly the “owner/landlord” of the province of Maine in France. However, again this makes no sense because Henreietta Maria had no obvious dealings with the Council of New England or the land itself.
Some speculate that the name came from “Broadmayne,” a village in the English county of Dorset, near where Sir Ferdinando Gorge’s family originated. Through the years that village has appeared in documents as “Maine,” “Meine,” “Maene,” and “Mayne.”
However, even Sir Ferdinando Gorges wasn’t too thrilled with the name of Maine. When he and Captain John Mason split the territory in 1629, he wanted to rename this area first “Laconia” and then “New Somersetshire,” while Mason called his territory New Hampshire. King Charles agreed to New Hampshire, but for reasons known only to him did not want to change Maine. Therefore, in 1639 King Charles declared, it “shall forever hereafter be called and named the Province or County of Mayne and not by any other name or names whatsoever.”
King Charles almost didn’t have the final word here though. As late as 1819 when in negotiations to be declared independent from Massachusetts, “Lygonia” and “Columbus” were both discussed as possible options as a new name for the state. Thankfully, those discussions didn’t go very far.
There have also been historians who took a more practical perspective as to the name’s origin. They argue the name simply came from the nautical term “mainland,” often spelled “Mayne,” “Meyne,” and “Main,” by early explorers and settlers.
Despite it’s unknown origins the name stuck, and on March 15, 1820 Maine became the 23rd state in the United States of America. If you’d like to learn more about the history of our favorite state we recommend these three books by Charles E. Clark, The Eastern Frontier: The Settlement of Northern New England 1610-1763, Maine: A History, and Maine in the Early Republic: From Revolution to Statehood.
