12 Town and City Names Floridians Say Every Day Without Knowing What They Mean
A friend from out of state asks what your town’s name means, and you realize you’ve never thought about it.
Many Floridians haven’t, even though the answers can be surprising.
Here’s what some Florida town and city names mean.
1. Okeechobee
Okeechobee County’s name comes from two Hitchiti words, oki for water and chobi for big, according to the Florida Department of State.
Lake Okeechobee bears the Hitchiti name for big water.
The lake covers about 730 square miles, with a 135-mile shoreline.
Britannica ranks it as the third largest freshwater lake wholly within the country.
Big isn’t an exaggeration.
2. Ocala
The Florida Department of State’s list gives heavily clouded as the literal meaning of Ocala, then adds perhaps beyond discovery.
Britannica says the name comes from Ocali, the Timucua name for the province Hernando de Soto passed through in 1539, and calls its literal meaning unknown.
The City of Ocala says the Timucuan village of Ocali is commonly thought to mean Big Hammock.
Ask all three, and you get three different answers.
Ocala became the seat of Marion County in 1846, and the state’s county list names Marion for the Revolutionary War hero General Francis Marion.
3. Boca Raton
Boca Raton comes from the Spanish Boca de Ratones, which the state’s name list translates as rat’s mouth.
Seamen used the term for a hidden rock that a ship’s cable might rub against.
The Boca Raton Historical Society says the story is more complicated and describes Boca de Ratones as a navigational term for a rocky or troublesome inlet.
Eighteenth-century maps placed the name farther south, near present-day Miami and Biscayne Bay.
Even the spot moved.
4. Islamorada
Islamorada is Spanish for purple island, according to the Florida Department of State’s list.
The village takes in six keys: Plantation, Windley, Upper Matecumbe, Lower Matecumbe, Lignumvitae and Indian.
One name covers six keys.
5. Tallahassee
The name Tallahassee belongs to a city about halfway between Pensacola and Jacksonville, in the central part of the northern Panhandle.
The Florida Department of State’s name list says the name comes from a Muskogee word meaning old town.
Britannica traces it to a Creek word with the same meaning and says Tallahassee became the capital in 1824.
6. Miami
The Florida Department of State traces Miami to Mayaimi, a lake that’s now Lake Okeechobee, and translates the word as very large.
Britannica gives a range, probably big water or sweet water.
The word may have referred to the lake or to local Native Americans who took their name from the lake.
Both tie the name to the lake, so the city’s name probably started as the lake’s.
Miami was incorporated in 1896, the same year Henry M. Flagler extended his railway to the site.
Where the State’s Name List Comes From
The Florida Department of State’s name-origins pages cite the Atlas of Florida, Allen Morris’s Florida Place Names, and a 1956 gazetteer of place names with Native American roots.
The Florida Geological Survey published that gazetteer, and J. Clarence Simpson wrote it.
The list itself uses probably and perhaps in entries including Ocala, Apalachicola and Sarasota.
7. Weeki Wachee
Florida State Parks says Weeki Wachee was named by the Seminole and means little spring or winding river.
The Florida Department of State’s list gives the Muskogee words wekiwa for spring and chee for little, which it translates as little spring.
The mermaid show opened on October 13, 1947, under founder Newton Perry, a former U.S. Navy man.
In 2007, underwater explorers found new passages in the spring’s cave system.
They confirmed it as the deepest known freshwater cave system in the United States.
Little, but deep.
8. Hialeah
Hialeah means pretty prairie, from the Muskogee words haiyakpo for prairie and hili for pretty, according to the Florida Department of State.
Britannica says the name is probably derived from a Seminole term meaning pretty prairie or high prairie.
Aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss and Missouri cattleman James H. Bright settled the city in 1921.
Hialeah Park, the horse-racing track that opened in 1925, became famous for its landscaping and flamingos.
Both sources mention a prairie.
Psst! How much do you know about the stories behind place names? Take our quiz and see if you can ace it.
Quiz
Place Name IQ
Answer nine questions on the stories behind more place names. Feeling confident?
Orange County went by a different name from 1824 to 1845. Which one?
9. Apalachicola
Apalachicola probably comes from the Hitchiti words apalahchi, meaning on the other side, and okli, meaning people, according to the Florida Department of State.
Britannica offers a second possibility, a Choctaw word meaning allies.
The meaning isn't settled.
The city was established around 1820 as West Point and renamed in 1831.
It lies at the mouth of the Apalachicola River, about 80 miles southwest of Tallahassee.
10. Pensacola
Pensacola likely comes from Pansfalaya, the name of a Native American tribe, according to the state's list.
The Choctaw called that tribe the long-haired people.
Britannica also derives the name from Pansfalaya and says a Spanish settlement was made on the bay coast in 1559 but was abandoned two years later.
It lasted two years.
Pensacola became the seat of Escambia County in 1822.
11. Palatka
Palatka's name goes with its setting on the St. Johns River, about 50 miles south of Jacksonville.
The Florida Department of State's list traces the name to the Muskogee word pilotaikita, which means ferry, ford or crossing.
It also calls Palatka a major trading post on the river.
Britannica gives a Seminole form, Pilatka, and translates it as crossing over or cows' crossing.
Both point to a crossing.
Palatka has been the seat of Putnam County since 1849.
12. Sarasota
The Florida Department of State's county list traces Sarasota to the Calusa language and says the meaning isn't known.
It offers Point of Rocks as a possibility, hedged with the word perhaps.
Britannica gives another explanation, that the name may have been derived from a Spanish term meaning a place of dancing.
Two theories, no confirmed answer.
Sarasota lies along Sarasota Bay, an arm of the Gulf of Mexico, and has been the seat of Sarasota County since 1921.
Landscape Names
Several more names on the state's list describe the land.
Opa-locka comes from the Muskogee words for swamp and big, and the name refers to a hammock inside the present city limits.
Panasoffkee comes from the Muskogee pani for valley and sufki for deep, meaning deep valley.
Okaloosa comes from the Choctaw words oka for water and lusa for black, so it reads as black water.
Wakulla is probably a Timucuan word for a spring of water, according to the state's county list.
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