Before we delve into New Mexico, let’s clarify why it is called that. The term Nuevo México (“New Mexico” in Spanish) comes from the word Mexica (pronounced meh-SHE-kuh). This was the name the Aztecs used for themselves, so when the Spanish arrived in Central America, they started calling them Mexicanos and the area they lived in (a territory around the modern Mexico City) – México. The name Nuevo México itself was born, when in 1563 the Spaniards extended their colonial conquest farther north, beyond the river of Rio Grande. Technically, the new territory was called Santa Fe de Nuevo México (we will discuss this name a little later), and it included the current State of New Mexico and some extra land around it.
The Spanish didn’t stop there, though. By the time the modern Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, the Viceroyalty of New Spain (all Spanish colonies in the Americas) controlled half of the current United States. It included present-day California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, half of the modern New Mexico, Texas, and parts of Colorado, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. All this has now become part of the newly coined Mexican Empire. So, basically, if nothing had changed, Mexico today would start at the southern borders of Oregon and Idaho. But things did change. After losing to the US in the Mexican–American War of 1846-1848, Mexico lost all of that, except for a narrow swath of land in the southern Arizona and New Mexico. When the Americans cut new territories and states out of their newly acquired land, the names of 3 of them (California, New Mexico, and Texas) came from the names of the original Mexican provinces – Alta California (Upper California), Nuevo México, and Coahuila y Tejas.