Dakota (given name) Dakota (given name) Dakota is a unisex given name derived from the name of an indigenous Native American tribe: Dakota people or from the name of two states in the United States: North Dakota and South Dakota which are also derived from the Dakota people local to that area. The name is translated to mean "friend", "friendly" or "allies" in the Yankton-Yanktonai and Santee dialects of the Lakota Sioux language. The name has been in occasional use for both sexes in the United States since at least the 1940s. The name's popularity grew in the 1990s in the US. It
Native American identity in the United States However, many people who do not satisfy tribal requirements identify themselves as Native American - whether due to biology, culture, or some other reason. The United States census allows citizens to check any ethnicity without requirements of validation. Thus, the census allows individuals to self-identify as Indian, merely by checking the racial category, "Native American/Alaska Native". In 1990, about 60 percent of the more than 1.8 million persons identifying themselves in the census as American Indian were actually enrolled in a federally recognized tribe. Using self identification allows both uniformity and includes many different ideas of "Indianness". It also avoids