Meaning and Origin
What does the name Alaska mean? Keep reading to find the user submitted meanings, dictionary definitions, and more.
Origin and Meaning of Alaska
User Submitted Origins
Native American
67%
English
25%
American
8%
User Submitted Meanings
- According to a user from Indiana, U.S., the name Alaska is of American origin and means "great land".
- A submission from Idaho, U.S. says the name Alaska means "That which breaks against the shore, the mainland, great land. Also:. The name 'Alaska' was introduced in the Russian colonial period when it was used to refer to the peninsula. It was derived from an Aleut, or Unangam (the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska) idiom, which symbolically refers to the mainland or shore of Alaska. Figuratively, it means object to which the action of the sea is directed. It is also known as Alyeska, the 'great land', an Aleut word derived from the same root".
International Interest
Also see international interest
Other Dictionary Sources
- A state in northwestern North America; the 49th state admitted to the union ("Alaska is the largest state in the United States")
Wiktionary
From Aleut alaxsxaq (“that toward which the action of the sea is directed”). Commonly misattributed to Russian ала (ala) + -ский (-skij, adjectival suffix).
- The 49th state of the United States. Postal code: AK, capital: Juneau, largest city: Anchorage.
- Ellipsis of baked Alaska.
Alaska was also found in the following language(s): Catalan, Danish, Faroese, Finnish, German, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, and Swedish