The name Alaska comes from the language of the area's indigenous people and is derived from the Yupik word Alyeska, meaning great land or that which the sea breaks against..The Aleuts lived on the Aleutian Islands, a chain that extends westward from a large peninsula in southwestern Alaska.his name was used by the United States to refer first to the entire Territory and then to the State after its purchase in 1867. Alaska has no official nickname although, when it joined the union in 1959 a number of suggestions were made.