The whisky made in Scotland by Scots is called scotch. Whiskeys made in Ireland and Canada are called Irish and Canadian. So why is America's best known and most popular whiskey style called bourbon, a name borrowed from French royalty? 

The standard explanation is that it was named for Bourbon County, 

What is now Kentucky was originally the Kentucky District of Virginia. Because America was grateful to France for its help during the Revolution, French names were very popular in the late 18th century. Bourbon County, Virginia, was established in 1785 and named after the French royal family.

By 1785, whiskey making was already well established in the region. The first whiskey in the Kentucky territory probably was made at Fort Harrod, the first settlement, in or about 1775. Fort Harrod (now Harrodsburg) is in Mercer County, which was established the same year as Bourbon County.

After Kentucky became a state in 1792, its legislature carved up Bourbon and the other existing counties, so that by 1800 there were 43 and the map of eastern Kentucky looked pretty much as it does today. In his book Kentucky Bourbon; The Early Years of Whiskeymaking (The University Press of Kentucky, 1971), historian Henry Crowgey says that people living in what had been the original Bourbon County continued to call the region "Old Bourbon" after the new counties were created.

As the 19th century dawned, one of the most important cities in "Old Bourbon" was Limestone, today known as Maysville, in what is now Mason County. Limestone was the region's principal Ohio River port, beginning in about 1784, and anything produced in the region that was intended for export was transported to Limestone to be loaded onto flatboats and shipped down river, ultimately to New Orleans.

Whiskey from the region's many small farmer-distillers was one of the main export products. It was shipped in barrels, often with the words "Old Bourbon" stenciled on the barrel heads to indicate their port of origin. The whiskey labeled "Old Bourbon" was different because it was the first corn whiskey most people had ever tasted. They liked it and began to ask for it by name. In time, "bourbon" became the common name for any corn-based whiskey.

When the standard story of the name's origin is told, the name of Elijah Craig is often invoked. Although Craig was a distiller, his operations were never in Bourbon County. Craig's site was first in Fayette (named for the French general), then in Woodford when that county was established in 1788, then in Scott (after 1792), but never in either Bourbon or "Old Bourbon."

As for the whiskey itself, it did not begin to resemble what we know as bourbon until about the middle of the 19th century. The "Old Bourbon" whiskey shipped from Limestone was more like the raw, green "corn likker" we associate with mountain moonshine. 

As is often noted, there are no distilleries in Bourbon County today. In fact, it is a dry county where its famous namesake cannot even be sold.