<P> Since Appalachia lacks definite physiographical or topographical boundaries, there has been some disagreement over what exactly the region encompasses . The most commonly used modern definition of Appalachia is the one initially defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission in 1965 and expanded over subsequent decades . The region defined by the Commission currently includes 420 counties and eight independent cities in 13 states, including all of West Virginia, 14 counties in New York, 52 in Pennsylvania, 32 in Ohio, 3 in Maryland, 54 in Kentucky, 25 counties and 8 cities in Virginia, 29 in North Carolina, 52 in Tennessee, 6 in South Carolina, 37 in Georgia, 37 in Alabama, and 24 in Mississippi . When the Commission was established, counties were added based on economic need, however, rather than any cultural parameters . </P> <P> The first major attempt to map Appalachia as a distinctive cultural region came in the 1890s with the efforts of Berea College president William Goodell Frost, whose "Appalachian America" included 194 counties in 8 states . In 1921, John C. Campbell published The Southern Highlander and His Homeland in which he modified Frost's map to include 254 counties in 9 states . A landmark survey of the region in the following decade by the United States Department of Agriculture defined the region as consisting of 206 counties in 6 states . In 1984, Karl Raitz and Richard Ulack expanded the ARC's definition to include 445 counties in 13 states, although they removed all counties in Mississippi and added two in New Jersey . Historian John Alexander Williams, in his 2002 book Appalachia: A History, distinguished between a "core" Appalachian region consisting of 164 counties in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia, and a greater region defined by the ARC . In the Encyclopedia of Appalachia (2006), Appalachian State University historian Howard Dorgan suggested the term "Old Appalachia" for the region's cultural boundaries, noting an academic tendency to ignore the southwestern and northeastern extremes of the ARC's pragmatic definition . </P> <P> While exploring inland along the northern coast of Florida in 1528, the members of the Narváez expedition, including Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, found a Native American village near present - day Tallahassee, Florida, whose name they transcribed as Apalchen or Apalachen (IPA: (apaˈlatʃen)). The name was soon altered by the Spanish to Apalachee and used as a name for the tribe and region spreading well inland to the north . Pánfilo de Narváez's expedition first entered Apalachee territory on June 15, 1528, and applied the name . Now spelled "Appalachian", it is the fourth oldest surviving European place - name in the U.S. After the de Soto expedition in 1540, Spanish cartographers began to apply the name of the tribe to the mountains themselves . The first cartographic appearance of Apalchen is on Diego Gutiérrez' map of 1562; the first use for the mountain range is the map of Jacques le Moyne de Morgues in 1565 . Le Moyne was also the first European to apply "Apalachen" specifically to a mountain range as opposed to a village, native tribe, or a southeastern region of North America . </P> <P> The name was not commonly used for the whole mountain range until the late 19th century . A competing and often more popular name was the "Allegheny Mountains", "Alleghenies", and even "Alleghania ." In the early 19th century, Washington Irving proposed renaming the United States either "Appalachia" or "Alleghania". </P>

What is the origin of the word appalachian