Named from its principal river. This stream was so called from a contiguous bluff, familiarly known to the early French voyageurs as La montagne qui trempe a l'eau ("the mountain that is steeped in the water"). This, in its turn, seems to have been a translation of the Indian term, Pah-hah-dak, the Sioux word for "mountain separated by water;" or Hay-nee-ah-chah, the Ho-Chunk word for "soaking mountain" -- see Wis. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, 1906, p. 246.

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[Source: Kellogg, Louise Phelps. "Derivation of County Names" in Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin for 1909, pages 219-231.]