from their Algonquian language, meaning "stealthy". In the 17th century, the terms Minqua or Minquaa were used interchangeably to refer to the five nations of the Iroquois League, and to the Susquehannock, another Iroquoian-speaking people.

The people who became called by European settlers as Mingo migrated to the Ohio Country along the river in the mid-eighteenth century, part of a movement of Haudenosaunee