Toponymy of New Netherland

Toponymy Of New Netherland

Nieuw-Nederland, or New Netherland, was the seventeenth century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on northeastern coast of North America. The claimed territory were the lands from the Delmarva Peninsula to southern Cape Cod. Settled areas are now part of the Mid-Atlantic states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and southwestern Connecticut. There were small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Its capital, New Amsterdam, was located at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan on the Upper New York Bay. The most developed part of the province roughly corresponds to today's Greater New York Metro Area.

Placenames in most cases had their roots in Dutch and the Algonquian languages, and occasionally the Iroquoian Mohawk. At the time of European settlement it was the territory of the various Native American groups. In many cases the names of the Natives Americans used today were taken from the word for the place they made their villages, or their sagamore. Both the Americans and the New Netherlanders often gave names inspired by the geography or geology of the natural environment and described a shape, location, feature, quality, or phenomenon.

The Lenape population, who had the most frequent contact with the New Netherlanders, were seasonally migrational groups around the New York Bay and along the Lower Hudson who became known collectively as the River Indians. Among them were the Wecquaesgeek and Siwanoy (to the north on the east side of the Hudson River); the Hackensack, Raritan, the Ramapough, and Tappan (to the west); and the Canarsee and Rockaway (on western Long Island).

The Munsee inhabited the Highlands and western Hudson Valley. The Susquehannock, who lived along the Zuyd Rivier, were called the Minquas. The Mohawk, an Iroquois people, inhabited the Albany region, and the valley that now bears the name. The Mahicans, defeated by the Mohawks, retreated to the Housatonic River region soon after the arrival of the Dutch.

The Native Americans used wampum for transcription. The Swannikens, or Salt Water People (as the Europeans were called), used the Latin alphabet to write down the words they heard from the Wilden (as the Lenape were called). These approximations were no doubt greatly influenced by Dutch, which was the lingua franca of the multilingual province. Some names still exist in their altered form, their current spelling (and presumably pronunciation) having evolved over the last four centuries into American vernacular.

Early settlers and their descendants often "Batavianized" names for geographical locations, the exonyms, rather than by their autonym, subsequently becoming the name of the Native Americans used today. In some cases it cannot be confirmed, or there is contention, as to whether the roots are in the Dutch or native tongue as sources do not always concur. Some can have several interpretations, while locative suffixes vary depending on the Algonquian language dialect that prevailed. Kill, meaning stream or channel, wyck meaning district, (or its English equivalents wick and wich), and hook meaning point are often seen.

Dutch surnames abound throughout the region as avenues, lakes, parks. Orange and Nassau come from the "first family" of the Dutch Republic, a dynasty of nobles traditionally elected "Stadtholder." William III of England was also Prince of Orange, succeeding to the English throne through the conquest known as the Glorious Revolution, so the appellation Orange, though sometimes named for the English king in this period, reflects his Dutch birth and dynasty.