The origins of names in New York's diverse neighborhoods

Take a look at this map of New York City. It shows us how it's divided into five specific regions, or to call them their proper names, boroughs. It's a bit of an odd term. It derives from the old English word burg meaning a fortified settlement. Throughout time it transformed and it's still used in various languages, usually as a suffix in modern English with Bury or Borough as is the case with Middlesbrough, a town in England. It's used as Borg in Scandinavian languages like Helsingborg, a city in Sweden, and as Burg in German like Hamburg. A lot of people think Borough is short for neighborhood or connected to it in some way and while they are similar words with similar meanings, their origins are very different. Neighbour comes from an old English term neagebur meaning near dweller, a compound of Nea meaning near and Gebur meaning dweller, adding on hood as a condition, while borough has the fortified area origin we just mentioned. Think of it this way, a neighborhood is a community of people that live near each other, a borough is a fortified or administrative unit connected to a specific region. And in New York there are five of them. Their names are Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island. Each of them has a different origin and meaning connected to their name and in this video we are going to find out what those are. Guys we are so close to 900,000 subscribers I really want to hit that mark so if you're watching this and you aren't subscribed please consider doing so. Now let's start with arguably the most famous borough, Manhattan. Well, it's the most famous for me because I was obsessed with friends growing up and still love it today. The name of Manhattan wasn't chosen by Europeans who arrived and colonized the region. In fact, it's likely one of the most ancient names in America. It was historically part of the Lenape hunting territory, the lands of the Lenape tribes. They actually ruled a bunch of territories, most of New York, New Jersey, even Pennsylvania and a bit of what is now Maryland there were several Lenape settlements in the area that is now modern Manhattan including Sapokanikan, Nektank and Quonneck which were interconnected by a series of trails the primary trail on the island which would later become Broadway Daniel Steiner has a fantastic video on this that you should watch explaining how that native road essentially influenced the entire city's planning up to today, but anyway, let's get back to the names. The Lenape called this set of settlements Manhattan, and it seems the origin was their local language, called Munsee. They pronounced it as Man-ha-tan. For them, mana meant gather, and hat meant bow. The han seems to be how they conjugated verbs, or something. And so, for them, Manhattan meant the place where we gather bows, most likely because they used the local trees for wood used in the manufacturing of them. In fact, according to a Munsee tradition recorded by Albert Sekaking in the 19th century, who was a Native American missionary and scholar, the island had in fact been named for a grove of hickory trees that was considered ideal for bow making. Hickory wood, despite being categorized as a hardwood, is known for its flexibility. This allowed them to work it and bend it in the shape of bows without losing sturdiness. Other theories about the name exist, of course. The Encyclopedia of New York quotes a few, like it may be coming from the Munsee word menate, meaning island, or from another super complicated word, manahaktanyenk, which meant place of inebriation, I guess maybe where they went to get drunk. Regardless of the origin, that's what they called the island, and when the Dutch arrived and established their colony of New Amsterdam, which would go on to become British and later American New York, they borrowed this term from the natives, changing the way it was spelled and said to Manhattan. But other weird spellings exist in historical records. Robert Jewett, an officer on Henry Hudson's ship in 1609, logged it as Manahatta. The Velasco map from 1610 depicts the name twice differently, using Manahatta on the west side and Manahattin on the east side. In fact, the earliest depiction of Manhattan from 1626 made by the Dutch shows us Fort Amsterdam in the Manhattans, also using the plural form of the word. Now the Dutch were probably upset that they lost New Amsterdam to the British. They probably could have used someone to talk to at the time, maybe even a therapist. Which brings us to the sponsor of this video, BetterHelp. 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So now let's move on to Brooklyn, which arguably rivals Manhattan in its popularity. And maybe you want to take a wild guess at what the origin is again? That's right, the Dutch. The name Brooklyn is derived from the original Dutch town of Broekelen. This is located in the Netherlands in the province of Utrecht. Like many other colonists, the Dutch arrived here and named it a new colonial settlement After an old one in their home country, that original Dutch town called Broekelen had an older wording, Broekeled, that dates as far back as at least 953 AD. Broek would have been a word meaning bog or marshland, while led would mean something like small water stream. As usual, some alternative proposals for the origin exist, like it meaning broken land, but the original Broeckleid was in fact a marshland with a small river so it makes sense that's the correct origin of the name. The American settlement of Broeckleid was established in 1646 as a part of the Dutch New Amsterdam colonies. From then onwards the name of the colony went through a bunch of spelling variations from Broeckleid to Brooklyn, Brockleid, Brocklein, even Brookline and as the British took over New Amsterdam the name became more and more anglicized eventually becoming Brooklyn proper. Next and to take a break from these Dutch origins we have Queens. Queens County was established in 1683 as a part of the British colony in the area. It was one of the original 12 counties of the British province of New York. Today there are 62 counties in the state of New York but only five of them are in New York City corresponding precisely to the five boroughs but oddly having different names in some of the cases. The county name of Manhattan is New York itself, Bronx and Queens are the same as the borough names, Staten Island is Richmond in order of Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond, the illegitimate son of King Charles II of England, and for Brooklyn it's Kings, named after Charles II himself. And the connections to Charles II don't end here, because the borough and county name of Queens itself was apparently chosen in honor of his wife, Catherine of Braganza. While she was the English Queen, she was Portuguese by birth, marrying the British monarch as a reinforcement of the alliance between the two European nations. A fun fact, she is also responsible for popularizing the drink of tea in England, making it a social habit at court, then the aristocracy and then the commoners. Now remember I said we were taking a break from the Dutch origins, well we're right back at them with the Bronx. Although here the origin could arguably be Scandinavian too, so let's find out why. The Lenape people that lived in ancient Manhattan also lived in what is now the Bronx. They called it Rannankwa, but in this case, the colonizers chose to use a new name for their settlement. They named it after a man called Jonas Bronck, who lived between 1600 and 1643. He was a European settler, either Dutch or Swedish. Most evidence points to him being Swedish. He arrived in New Netherland, the Dutch colony, in spring of 1639 and he became the first recorded the European settler in what is now the Bronx region. He built a farm named Emaus by leasing land from the Dutch West India Company just north of the Dutch colony of New Harlem, now just known as Harlem, and being one of the neighborhoods in Upper Manhattan, taking its name from the Dutch Harlem city too. Bronck also bought additional land from the local tribes, eventually accumulating up to 500 acres of land between the Harlem river and what was known at the time as the Aquahung river. Because of his control of that land, that Aquahung river started being known as Bronx river and Dutch and English settlers refer to this land as Bronx land which eventually evolved into Bronx with an X. It's the only borough in New York City that is always referred to with the definite article as the Bronx. It's not even a colloquial thing, the legal name of it is the County of the Bronx. It seems the reason why is connected with that origin being the land of the Bronx, referencing his family and it just stuck around through time. And finally we have Staten Island. The island part is easy, it's an island, but what about the Staten? Well, you guessed it again, because of the Dutch. The early Dutch colonies in North America were under direct control of the Dutch West India Company. They had a certain degree of autonomy and were for all intents and purposes fully in control. time went on, however, locals began complaining about certain acts of tyranny and general incompetence in ruling by the local officials, and so the Dutch government began taking on a more direct role in the colonial management, up to the point where they took over entirely. This was specifically the case with the colony of Staten Island. Well, actually it was Staten-Eiland in Dutch, named after their national parliament, the Staten-General, meaning the general states, After England took control of the Dutch colonies in 1664, the Dutch name was anglicized to Staten Island. The native Lenape also had a name for it, Eykels, meaning the bad woods. Maybe they deemed the forest there dangerous for some reason, or the wood was just bad quality. I guess the name bad woods wouldn't be good to attract settlers, so I think the change was a good choice. So, those are the names and the origins and meanings of the five boroughs of New York, understanding where they come from and how they are very often connected to Dutch colonialism, sometimes to the British and even sometimes to the Native Americans that first lived there. Place names and their etymologies are fascinating because they always teach us so much about the history of that region and it's incredible to see how that history remains, it's carried and reflected into what we call these places every day even if we don't know about it. Think about the Native Americans that gave Manhattan its name, not knowing that centuries later people from all over the world would know about it because of the cultural impact that that place has. Or how Jonas Bronk would feel listening to all the rap songs that mention the Bronx because it would go on to be the birthplace of a musical genre called hip-hop. I don't know, I just find it really interesting. Thank you so much for watching this video, thank you to my patrons for their direct support every single month. If you want to support the channel as well make sure to join us over there if not that's totally fine i will see you next time for more general knowledge you may be noticing that i'm wearing the same sweatshirt as the other video it is the same day it's literally five minutes after i recorded the previous one um i just changed the moment cup so i can show you a new one the other one was more spring and this is more winter it's gotten even grayer outside and so i thought it was adequate to switch the movement vibe a little bit too.