Its capital is Hartford , and its most populous city is Bridgeport. Connecticut lies between the major hubs of New York City and Boston along the Northeast Corridor , where the New York-Newark Combined Statistical Area , which includes four of Connecticut's seven largest cities, extends into the southwestern part of the state.
The name of the river is in turn derived from anglicized spellings of Quinnetuket , a Mohegan-Pequot word for "long tidal river". Half of Connecticut was initially claimed by the Dutch colony New Netherland , which included much of the land between the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers, although the first major settlements were established by the English around the same time. Thomas Hooker led a band of followers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to form the Connecticut Colony , while other settlers from Massachusetts founded the Saybrook Colony and the New Haven Colony ; both merged into the former by Connecticut's official nickname, the "Constitution State", refers to the Fundamental Orders adopted by the Connecticut Colony in , which is considered by some to be the first written constitution in Western history.
In , Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth , state delegates to the Constitutional Convention , proposed a compromise between the Virginia and New Jersey Plans; [ 15 ] its bicameral structure for Congress , with a respectively proportional and equal representation of the states in the House of Representatives and Senate , was adopted and remains to this day.
In January , Connecticut became the fifth state to ratify the Constitution. Connecticut is a developed and affluent state, performing well on the Human Development Index and on different metrics of income except for equality. It is home to a number of prestigious educational institutions, including Yale University in New Haven , as well as other liberal arts colleges and private boarding schools in and around the " Knowledge Corridor ".
Historically a manufacturing center for arms, hardware, and timepieces, [ 16 ] Connecticut, as with the rest of the region, had transitioned into an economy based on the financial, insurance, and real estate sectors; many multinational firms providing such services can be found concentrated in the state capital of Hartford and along the Gold Coast in Fairfield County. The name Connecticut is derived from the Mohegan-Pequot word that has been translated as "long tidal river" and "upon the long river", [ 17 ] both referring to the Connecticut River.
