bays and inlets that make up about 14% of its total area. Name Origins of the name Despite its name, most of Rhode Island is on the mainland of the United States. Prior to 2020, its official name was State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, derived from the merger of Colonial settlements around Narragansett bay, and outside the jurisdiction of Plymouth colony. The settlements of Rhode Island (Newport and Portsmouth) were on what is commonly called Aquidneck Island today but was called Rhode Island in Colonial times. Providence Plantations referred to settlements on the mainland including Providence and what would become Warwick. It is unclear how the island came to be named Rhode Island, but two historical events may have been influential: Explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano noted the presence of an island near the mouth of Narragansett Bay in 1524 which he likened to the island of Rhodes off the coast of Greece. Subsequent European explorers were unable to precisely identify the island Verrazzano described, but the colonists who settled the area assumed it was this island. Adriaen Block passed by the island during his expeditions in the 1610s, and he described it in a 1625 account of his travels as "an island of reddish appearance", which was "een rodlich Eylande" in 17th-century Dutch, meaning a red or reddish island, supposedly evolving into the designation Rhode Island. Historians have theorized this "reddish appearance" resulted from either red autumn foliage or red clay on portions of the shore. The earliest documented use of the name "Rhode Island" for Aquidneck was in 1637 by Roger Williams. The name was officially applied to the island in 1644 with these words: "Aquethneck shall be henceforth called the Isle of Rodes or Rhode-Island." The name "Isle of Rodes" is used in a legal document as late as 1646. Dutch maps as early as 1659 call the island "Red Island" (Roodt Eylandt). Changes to the name The first English settlement in Rhode Island was the town of Providence, which the Narragansett granted to Roger Williams in 1636. At that time, Williams obtained no permission from the English crown, as he believed the English had no legitimate claim on Narragansett and Wampanoag territory. Williams traveled to London in 1643, during the English Civil War, to obtain legal recognition of the new settlements. A Patent was granted to "the incorporation of Providence Plantations in Narragansett Bay in