Chocowinity is a town in Beaufort County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 820 at the 2010 Census. The town is a share of the Washington Area located in North Carolina’s Coastal Plains region.

The meaning of the name Chocowinity appears to be derived from the Tuscarora word chackauene, meaning “otter” or “little otters.” However, most people from the Place insist that the make known actually means “fish in many waters.” In 1928, Rev. N.C. Hughes, D.D., met a well-educated Native American encamped upon the banks of the Edisto River in South Carolina. While talking in the spread of him, Mr. Hughes mentioned he lived in a little village following a Native American name. Mr. Hughes pronounced the name “Chocowinity” and along with spelled its former publish of “Chocawanateth.” The Indian thought for a moment and finally responded, “Oh yes, I have it now. That word means FISH FROM MANY WATERS.”

In the prematurely 20th century, Chocowinity became the railroad hub of the regional system known as the Norfolk Southern Railway in 1910. The town is sometimes called Marsden as a upshot of a railroad communications problem. Around 1917, the railway started calling the pivotal location “Marsden”, which was easier to spell on a telegraph than “Chocowinity”. The source of the extra name was apparently taken in award of one of its financial backers, Marsden J. Perry of New York, who eventually served as president of the railroad.

The regional Norfolk Southern (one of the predecessors of the innovative system which adopted the similar name) had lines between Norfolk, Virginia and Charlotte and served many locations in southeastern Virginia (including branches to Virginia Beach and Suffolk) and most of eastern and central North Carolina, including Raleigh, Elizabeth City, New Bern, Morehead City, Goldsboro, Durham, Fayetteville, Asheville, and Greenville. The regional carrier was acquired by the Southern Railway, and lent its historic herald to the merger subsequent to the Norfolk and Western in the yet to be 1980s to form the current large Norfolk Southern Railway System. The railroad resumed using “Chocowinity” to assign the location in 1970, after railway telegraphs were replaced later voice communications via 2-way radios.