
Dutch maps as early as 1659 call the island "Red Island" ( Roodt Eylandt code: nld promoted to code: nl ). The name was officially applied to the island in 1644 with these words: "Aquethneck shall be henceforth called the Isle of Rodes or Rhode-Island." The name "Isle of Rodes" is used in a legal document as late as 1646. The earliest documented use of the name "Rhode Island" for Aquidneck was in 1637 by Roger Williams. Historians have theorized that this "reddish appearance" resulted from either red autumn foliage or red clay on portions of the shore.


Adriaen Block passed by the island during his expeditions in the 1610s, and he described it in a 1625 account of his travels as "an island of reddish appearance", which was " een rodlich Eylande code: nld promoted to code: nl " in 17th-century Dutch, meaning a red or reddish island, supposedly evolving into the designation Rhode Island.Subsequent European explorers were unable to precisely identify the island which Verrazzano described, but the colonists who settled the area assumed that it was this island. Explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano noted the presence of an island near the mouth of Narragansett Bay in 1524 which he likened to the island of Rhodes off the coast of Greece.It is unclear how the island came to be named Rhode Island, but two historical events may have been influential: Providence Plantations referred to settlements on the mainland of Providence and Warwick. The settlements of Rhode Island ( Newport and Portsmouth) were on Rhode Island, which is called Aquidneck Island. This name was derived from the merger of Colonial settlements around Narragansett bay, and outside the jurisdiction of Plymouth colony.

Its official name was State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations from its beginning in 1636 until 2020. Name Origin of the name ĭespite its name, most of Rhode Island is on the mainland of the United States. Its official nickname is the "Ocean State", a reference to its 400 mi (640 km) of coastline and the large bays and inlets that make up about 14% of its total area.
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In November 2020, the state's voters approved an amendment to the state constitution formally dropping "and Providence Plantations" from its full name. It had been officially named the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations since the colonial era, but came to be commonly known as "Rhode Island". Because its citizens favored a weaker central government, it boycotted the 1787 convention that had drafted the United States Constitution, which it initially refused to ratify it finally did ratify it on May 29, 1790, the last of the original 13 states to do so. After the American Revolution, during which it was heavily occupied and contested, Rhode Island became the fourth state to ratify the Articles of Confederation, which it did on February 9, 1778. Rhode Island was the first colony to call for a Continental Congress, which it did in 1774, and the first to renounce its allegiance to the British Crown, which it did on May 4, 1776. The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations subsequently became a destination for religious and political dissenters and social outcasts, earning it the moniker "Rogue's Island". He founded Providence in 1636 on land purchased from local tribes, thereby creating the first settlement in North America with an explicitly secular government.

Rhode Island was unique among the Thirteen British Colonies in having been founded by a refugee, Roger Williams, who fled religious persecution in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to establish a haven for religious liberty. Native Americans lived around Narragansett Bay for thousands of years before English settlers began arriving in the early 17th century. Providence is its capital and most populous city. Rhode Island borders Connecticut to its west Massachusetts to its north and east and the Atlantic Ocean to its south via Rhode Island Sound and Block Island Sound and shares a small maritime border with New York, east of Long Island. The state takes its name from the eponymous island, though nearly all of its land area is on the mainland. state by area and the seventh-least populous, with slightly less than 1.1 million residents as of 2020 but Rhode Island has grown at every decennial count since 1790 and is the second-most densely populated state, after New Jersey. Rhode Island ( / ˌ r oʊ d-/ ( listen), like road) is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States.
