26 July 2021
York has gone through many changes over the centuries, both real and in name. The name York originally comes from the Celtic Eborakon or Eboracum, which probably means yew-tree estate, although it could mean Eburos's estate, with Eburos being a personal name. The Romans built a fortress and later a settlement there and adopted the name Eboracum, which was shortened over time to Evorog. The English arrived in the fifth century and altered the name to have an Old English meaning, Eoforwic (eofor (boar) + wic (settlement)). The Danes captured the city in the ninth century and altered Eoforwic to Jorvik. Over time, the < j > gave way to < y > and the -vik was reduced to just < k >, leaving us with York.
The Old English name for the city can be seen in the entry for the year 1066 in the Peterborough Chronicle:
þa hwile com Tostig eorl into Humbran mid.lx.scipum.Eadwine eorl com <mid> landfyrde & draf hine ut, & þa butsecarlas hine forsocan. & he for to Scotlande mid .xii.snaccum, & hine gemette Harold se norrena cyng mid .ccc. scipum, & Tostig him to beah, & hi bægen foran into Humbran oð þet hi coman to Eoferwic, & heom wið feaht Morkere eorl & Eadwine eorl, & se norrena cyng ahte siges geweald.
(Then when Earl Tostig came into Humber with 60 ships, Earl Eadwine came with an army and drove him out, and the naval levies forsook him. And he went to Scotland with 12 vessels, and there Harold, the Norse king, met him with 300 ships, and Tostig submitted to him & they both went into Humber until they came to York, and there fought with Earl Morker and Earl Eadwine, and the Norse king had the victory.)
York’s namesake, the city of New York, was originally known as New Amsterdam, having been founded by the Dutch in 1625. The English captured the town in 1664, renaming it after James, the Duke of York and Albany (who would later become King James II). The name change can be seen in Nathaniel Morton’s 1669 chronicle, titled New-Englands Memoriall. The entry for 1664 reads:
This year also His Majesties Commissioners, viz. Colonel Richard Nicolls, Sir Robert Carre Knight, George Cartwright Esq and Samuel Maverick Esq Arrived at Boston in New-England in the moneth of July: The tenour of whose Commission was in special, To reduce the Dutch at the Manhato's to His Majesties Obedience; which in some short time was accomplished, and the Place and Jurisdiction thereof surrendred up unto His Majesties said Commissioners, who styled it by the Name of New-York, and placed a Government over it of His Majesties Subjects, the aforesaid honourable Colonel Richard Nicolls being Governour in chief there.
Not only does that entry use the name New York, but it also makes reference to the Indigenous name for the island in the Hudson River, Manhattan. The name Manhattan appears in a 1610 journal by one of Henry Hudson’s sailors, but I haven’t found the journal itself, so I cannot provide a fuller context. The earliest settler-colonist use of the name that I have access to is from Johannes de Laet’s 1625 Nieuwe Wereldt. This was a difficult passage to transcribe. The combination of old-style, blackletter type, archaic spelling, and my poor Dutch language skills means that I have probably misspelled several words in the Dutch copy:
Hendrick Hudson met dit raport weder ghekeert zijde t’Amsterdam soo hebben eenighe Koop-lieden in den jare 1610, weder een schip derwaerts ghesonden te weten naer dese tweede rievier de welcke sy den naem geben van de Manhattes; van weghen de natie van Wilden die aen t’beghin van dese rieviere woonen.
(Henry Hudson returned to Amsterdam with this report; so, in the year 1610, a group of merchants again sent a ship there, that is to say, to the second river discovered, which was given the name Manhattan, after the savage nation that lived at its mouth of this river.)
Manhattan is a Lenape place name, although the Dutch and later the English referred to the Indigenous people who lived there as the Manhattan Indians, as can be seen in the above passage. Over the years, several etymologies for the name Manhattan have been postulated, but two stand out as being more likely than the others, each from a different Lenape dialect. The most likely is that it is a Munsee word, Man-ă-hă-tonh (place of wood for bows and arrows). The other contender is simpler, from the Unami Mënating (island).
It is somewhat fitting that New York and Manhattan are so closely associated, that a settler-colonist name that originally meant “yew-tree estate” should be associated with an Indigenous name meaning “place of wood for bows and arrows,” yew being a wood that is famous for making excellent bows.
Sources:
Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004.
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.
Goddard, Ives. “The Origin and Meaning of the Name ‘Manhattan.’” New York History, 91.4, Fall 2010, 277–93. JSTOR.
Grumet, Robert S. Manhattan to Minisink: American Indian Place Names in Greater New York and Vicinity. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2013.
Irvine, Susan, ed. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition 7 MS E, vol. 7 of 7. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004, 71, 115. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 636. JSTOR.
Laet, Johannes de. Nieuwe Wereldt. Leiden: Isaac Elzevir, 1625, 84. ProQuest: Early European Books.
Mills, A. D. A Dictionary of British Place Names, revised ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011. Oxfordreference.com.
Morton, Nathaniel. New-Englands Memoriall. Cambridge, Massachusetts: S.G. and M.J. for John Usher, 1669, 173. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2003, modified March 2021, s.v. New York, n.; September 2000, modified December 2020, s.v. Manhattan, n.1; second edition, 1989, York, n.1.
Photo credit: Michael Vadon, 2017. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.