updated 15 Jan, 2012 -below
Where did Utah get it's name?
Some may say the name is derived from the name of a Tribe of Natives that occupied the area, the Utes meaning "people of the mountains".
I found that [ ūtan ] is an old English preposition meaning [ without, outside of ] and is related to [ modern German außen, außer and Swedish utan ]. If you're American, this might translate into 'out there'.
At the time of Utah's discovery by European settlers, mainly Caucasian, (e.g. German, Swedish), there may have been a more obvious loss in translation. They may have discovered the open and barren salt flats and the salt lake, and just stated that there were no one there worth mentioning, when they reached the mountains and rivers and began their colony. A land outside of the known world, without European/Norse settlers.
Utan discovered at : (Circa 2010 C.E.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_prepositions
Utah State Government for many years has stated that the proper terminology of a citizen of Utah, is Utahn.
15 Jan, 2012
reading the oxford dictionary i found:
wild man of the woods, orang-utan, a Malay word.
if utan means woods it adds to Asiatic migratory theory that their language caried and applied to Utah tribal nomenclature, yet again meaning, out-there.