The word Tampa is a Native American word used to refer to the area when the first European explorers arrived in Florida. Its meaning is believed to be sticks of fire in the language of the Calusa, a Native American tribe. Other historians claim the name refers to The place to gather sticks. Sticks of fire may also relate to the high concentration of lightning strikes that Tampa Bay receives every year during the hot and wet summer months. Toponymist George R. Stewart writes that the name was the result of a miscommunication between the Spanish and the Indians, the Indian word being itimpi, meaning simply near it (Stewart, pg. 231).
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