Which state has the worst name?

[angus]

I like the euphonic native language names (tallahassee, talladega, alabama, tuscaloosa) better than the cacophonic native language names (nantucket, connecticut, massachusett, pawtucket).  That said, I tend to like all native names better than the ones imported from Europe, so names like Kentucky and Illinois are good ones, at least to me.  The sioux names (Minnesota, Dakota) are intermediate, somewhat more euphonic than the algonquit ones but don't quite roll as much as the ones in the southeast. 

Still, Spanish, English, and French names are okay if they're all Spanish or all English or all French.  Colorado, Nevada (those two get mispronounced by Anglophones, however, but when they're actually pronounced correctly they're very nice names), along with Florida and Arizona are nice.  Texas is a bit weird because it's an English pronunciation of a Spanish transliteration of an Attacapa name, and no one is really sure how the Attacapa peoples might have first pronounced it to the Spaniards. 

Probably the worst is Pennsylvania, because it combines an Englishman's surname with a latin word for forest.  I don't like mixing languages at all.  It's like saying polydentate ligand.  We should either say multidentate (all Latin) or polydontic (all greek).  Mixing doesn't work for me, so I vote for Pennsylvania.

[angus]

New Mexico, considering it was taken from Old Mexico by force by non-Mexicans.

The name existed long before the territorial expansion of the US against Mexico, and in fact long before the modern nation-state of Mexico existed.  The phrase "Nuevo México" can be found in the chronicles and journals of Spanish explorers as early as the mid-1500s.  It's true that the land was ceded to the US in the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo in 1850, but Mexico and New Mexico had long developed with independent histories until New Mexico passed into Mexican hands in 1821.  The gringos who applied for admission to the US as a state in 1912 were simply using a name that had been associated with the region for at least four centuries.  If you don't like the name New Mexico, then you should blame the conquistadores who gave it that name, not the gringos who made it a US state.

The name of the country itself is more of a misnomer, since in the Nahuatl language of the Aztec the word Mexico only refers to the central valley (DF and the surrounding states of Mexico and Morelos and a few others), which is the homeland of the Triple Alliance.  In fact, in political speeches, Mexican Presidents usually do not refer to the country as Mexico, but rather as "La Patria."

[angus]

Virginia itself stretches more westerly than WV does.

Indeed.  Virginia stretches way out west.  The westernmost part of Virginia is west of Detroit, even.

[angus]

mariana post?  mariana postal? 

While we're at it, wouldn't AR be more appropriate for Arizona?  You guys are bigger than Arkansas.  You could kick their asses and take AR away from them if you really wanted to.