Connecticut is a small state in the northeast of the United States, in the group of states people call New England. It sits beside New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. It was one of the original thirteen states from British colonial times, so it is old in American history. People sometimes call it the Constitution State.

The name is not from the English word connect, though it looks a little like it. It comes from a Mohegan-Pequot name, quinnitukqut, meaning “at the long tidal river” — a long river that the sea reaches into. English spelling later may have drifted toward connect because that word was already in people’s heads.

Say it kuh-NET-ih-kut. Do not make it sound like connect-icut.