What does the place name Mohave mean?
The name [Mojave] is composed of two Indian words, aha, water,
and macave, along or beside. Aha denotes either singular or plural
number. Mojaves translate the idiom "along or beside the water," or
freely as "people who live along the water (river)."
For more than a century the name "Mojave," or its counterpart
"Mohave," has been used as the name of an Indian tribe who lived -
and whose survivors still live - along the Colorado River. It has
come to be the name also of such geographic features as Mojave
River, Mojave Desert, Mojave Mountains, Mojave Valley, Lake Mojave.
Allegedly it is an Indian name, and supposedly the geographic
features were named after the Mojave, Mohave Indian tribe. Indians
who bear the name, however, say that it is a misnomer and not their
real tribal name. They claim that their true Indian name always
was, and is, Aha macave (pronounced aha makav, all a's sounded as
the a in "father," the c as in "cool," the e silent). The one form,
Aha macave, is both singular and plural.