 Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the United States of America. Massachusetts is known as "The Bay State" because of its the three large bays which dominate and shape the coastline. Massachusetts Bay in the Greater Boston and Cape Ann area and Cape Cod Bay, which shapes Cape Cod against the Atlantic Ocean, are on the eastern shore. Buzzards Bay, on the south coast, is the other large bay.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was named after the indigenous population, the Massachusett, whose name can be segmented as mass-adchu-et, where mass is "great", adchu is "hill" and et is a locative suffix. It has been translated as "at the great hill," "at the place of large hills," or "at the range of hills," referring to the Blue Hills, or in particular, Great Blue Hill, located on the boundary of Milton and Canton, to the southwest of Boston. |
