Rappahannock

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A river flowing through Virginia and North Carolina into the Chesapeake Bay ; an Algonquian-speaking people who lived along the river in colonial Virginia
2. The name of a waterway in the American Mid-Atlantic region ; a historical Indigenous group whose homeland lay along that same river valley
3. A large river of eastern Virginia that empties into Chesapeake Bay ; the Native people who originally inhabited the lands beside that river

Etymology: The river takes its name from the Rappahannock people, an Algonquian-speaking group whose homeland lay along its banks in eastern Virginia. The English took the name from the people who lived beside the water, and it came to apply to both the group and the river. Its exact meaning is less certain. It is often rendered as something like "river of quick water" or "where the water rises and falls," a description that would suit the river's tidal and rapid stretches, but these glosses rest on interpretations of an Algonquian term whose precise sense cannot be confirmed.