As the votes are counted in this month's US Presidential election, you might wonder how the 50 states got their names.

Of the 50 states that make up the US, most, like Massachusetts, Nebraska and Oklahoma, are named after words derived from or used by Native American tribes. Others, like Colorado, New Jersey and Vermont, were named in the languages of their European settlers.

However, 11 of the 50 were named after significant figures in the early history of the United States. The states in question, and how they got their names, are listed below.

Delaware

Delaware is named after the Delaware River and Delaware Bay, which were in turn named after Sir Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr. West was governor of the colony of Virginia when the area was first explored by Europeans, and travelled the river himself in 1610. His title was likely derived from a Norman French phrase meaning ‘of the war’ or warrior.

Georgia

Georgia, one of the initial Thirteen Colonies founded by British settlers, was named after King George II, the monarch who had granted its colonial charter.

Louisiana

Before it was purchased by the United States in 1803, Louisiana had been both a Spanish colony and a French one. When French explorer René-Robert Cavelier claimed the territory drained by the Mississippi River in 1682, he named it La Louisiane in honour of Louis XIV, King of France from 1643 to 1715.

Maryland

Maryland is widely accepted to have been named for Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles I, who granted colony's charter. However Maryland‘s founder George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, intended the colony to be a haven for Catholics, and some scholars believe he named it after the mother of Jesus.

New York

Both the state and New York City were named for James Stuart, Duke of York and future King James II of England, after the British annexed the colony from the Dutch in 1664.

North and South Carolina

King Charles I granted a charter to Sir Robert Heath to start a colony in what is now the Carolinas. Heath named the land in his honour. Carolina comes from Carolus, the Latin form of Charles.

Pennsylvania

In 1681 King Charles II granted ownership of a large piece of his American lands to William Penn, to repay a debt the crown owed to Penn’s father, who had been an MP and an Admiral in the British Navy. The King named it Pennsylvania, or ‘Penn’s Woods’ – reportedly distressing the younger Penn, who feared people would think he had named the colony after himself. Despite entreaties, the king would not rename the land.

Virginia

Named for Queen Elizabeth I of England (known as the Virgin Queen), who in 1583 granted Walter Raleigh the charter to form a colony north of Spanish Florida.

Washington

The state was created from the western part of Washington Territory – a much larger area of land which incorporated the entirety of modern Idaho and parts of Montana and Wyoming. Both the territory and the state which was created in its western corner in 1889 were named in honour of the first president of the United States, George Washington.

West Virginia

West Virginia was formed in 1861 when residents of 39 of Virginia’s north western counties voted to create a new state rather than join the Confederacy during the American Civil War. It was named after the same queen as the state it split from, though it was initially proposed that the new stated be called Kanawha, after a river that ran through the area.