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The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is the smallest state by area, and it is also the state with the longest official name. Rhode Island was the first of the thirteen original American colonies to declare independence from British rule, signaling the start of the American Revolution.
The state's common name, Rhode Island, actually refers only to the largest island in Narragansett Bay, also known as Aquidneck Island. Some historians think that the name is derived from Roodt Eylandt, old Dutch for "red island," given to the island by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block due to the red clay on the island's shore. Other historians believe the name owes its origins to Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, upon discovering nearby (present-day) Block Island named it Rhode Island because of its similarity in shape to the Greek island of Rhodes. Later settlers, mistaking which island Verrazzano was referring to, gave the name to Aquidneck Island instead.
Despite most of the state being part of the mainland, the name Rhode Island leads some out-of-staters to mistakenly believe that the entire state is an island, sometimes confusing it with Long Island, New York, which is only about 100 miles southwest of Rhode Island across the Atlantic Ocean. Rhode Island is nicknamed "Little Rhody" traditionally but the state officially adopted the nickname "The Ocean State".
