Kalamazoo is the name of a natural feature and several settled places in the U.S. state of Michigan: * The Kalamazoo River * The City of Kalamazoo * Kalamazoo Township * Kalamazoo County All are named after the river, but there is uncertainty concerning the origin of the river's name. A number of etymologies (some of them folk etymologies) have been proposed, all of which suggest that the name was derived from the languages of local indigenous peoples, the historic Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Miami. Some of the theories are: