Why is Washington DC called “District of Columbia”?
The District of Columbia is a federal district that takes up exactly same area that the city of Washington is in. Therefore we could refer to either DC or Washington and be referring to the same place. The city’s not in a state, but it is in the country, and so it has to be in something, so it’s in a district that we named Columbia. But why Columbia, you ask? Columbia was one of the old poetic names for our nation, kind of like we use “America” or “the States” or “Uncle Sam” today. It references Christopher Columbus and a woman’s form vaguely akin to the French Marianne. It fell out of popularity about 100 years ago, but we used to have pro-American songs like “Hail Columbia” (which, incidentally, is still the Vice President’s anthem as opposed to “Hail to the Chief”). CBS used to be called “Columbia Broadcasting System”. But why specifically did we name the district Columbia? It’s partially because in 1791, the year they began planning the new Federal City and had to come up with a na
