Note 678 — Chapter IX · (continued 3)

The official name of this State since 1663 is “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.” The Island of “Aquedneck,” its Indian name, spelled in various ways, was so called till 1644, when the Court ordered that henceforth it be “called the Isle of Rhodes, or Rhode Island.” It is said that Block, the Dutch navigator, in 1614, gave the island the name of “Roodt Eylandt,” from the prevalence of red clay in some portions of its shores. There are traditions connecting the name with Verrazano and the Isle of Rhodes in Asia Minor, which require no further mention. See Arnold’s Rhode Island, i. 70; Rhode Island Colonial Records, i. 127; Verrazano in 2 N. Y. Hist. Coll., i. 46; Brodhead’s New York, i. 57, 58; Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., i. 367; J. G. Kohl, in Magazine of American History, February, 1883.