 It's possible the word "Cherokee" comes from a Muscogee word meaning “people of different speech.”

Anthropologists and historians have two main theories of Cherokee origins.One is that the Cherokee, an Iroquoian-speaking people, are relative latecomers to Southern Appalachia, who may have migrated in late prehistoric times from northern areas around the Great Lakes, the traditional territory of the "Haudenosaunee" nations and other Iroquoian-speaking peoples.Another theory is that the Cherokee had been in the Southeast for thousands of years.