Is the origin of the word ‘Nevada’ Spanish?

“Nevada” is a Spanish word literally translated as “snowy.” The name was given to the region by the Spanish in reference to the snow-capped Sierra Nevada range.

The Spanish explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, the first European to explore modern-day California, beheld the Santa Cruz Mountains covered with snow in 1542 and named them Sierras Nevadas. “Sierra” is the Spanish word for mountain. Later explorers used the name for other mountains inland until it became fixed to its current range.

Native American tribes such as the Paiute, Washoe and Shoshone lived on the land for thousands of years before European contact.

Mexico ceded Nevada and other Southwestern lands to the U.S. in 1848 under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War.

The U.S. kept the name, officially establishing Nevada as the 36th state in the nation in 1864.