Connecticut’s Nicknames

The “Constitution State”
Connecticut’s official nickname is the “Constitution State”. According to the Connecticut State Register and Manual, 1998, p. 832:

The Constitution by Thorne Enterprises

Connecticut was designated the Constitution State by the General Assembly in 1959. As early as the 19th Century, John Fiske, a popular historian from Connecticut made the claim that the Fundamental Orders of 1638/1639 were the first written constitution in history. Some contemporary historians dispute Fiske’s analysis. However, Simeon E. Baldwin, a former Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, defended Fiske’s view of the Fundamental Orders in Osborn’s History of Connecticut in Monographic Form by stating that ‘never had a company of men deliberately met to frame a social compact for immediate use, constituting a new and independent commonwealth, with definite officers, executive and legislative, and prescribed rules and modes of government, until the first planters of Connecticut came together for their great work on January 14th, 1638-39.

Secondary Nicknames for the State of Connecticut

According to the “Soubriquets Of States”, The Times, Washington, July 14, 1901:

• Connecticut was formerly known as The Blue Law State from the contemptuous epithet. Blue applied at the restoration of Charles II to every person and thing that savored of Puritanism. Hence, also the derisive epithet applied by the Southerners to the people of the Eastern States of Blue-nose Yankee.
• Another nickname given Connecticut, Is The Nutmeg State. This arose from the absurd story that wooden nutmegs were manufactured there on a large scale for exportation.
• A more flattering designation of Connecticut is The Land of Steady Habits, which phrase explains itself.