Pronounced you-NAY-kuh, the name comes from the Cherokee word unega, which means “white.”

Cherokee residents called the Unaka Mountain range that forms part of the Tennessee-North Carolina border the White Mountains.  This name likely reflected the blanketing of color seen when American Chestnut tree blossoms that, in Spring, turned the mountainsides white.  Before the Great Chestnut Blight, as many as 25-50% of trees in the Unaka mountains were chestnuts.

Source: Mooney, James. (1972). Myths of the Cherokee and sacred formulas of the Cherokee. Nashville, Tennessee: C & R Publishers.  [cited at https://sites.google.com/a/ues.carterk12.net/unaka-elementary-school/]