Says the (unlinkable) Oxford English Dictionary, in its entry for "Yankee," which sends us to "Yengee," where we see this quote from an 1819 history of the Indians: "When the Yengeese arrived at Machtitschwanne, they looked about everywhere for good spots of land." If it's Yengeese — with an "e" on the end — one might imagine the singular as "Yengoose," that is, if you're amused by invented false notions about words. In that form of play, the etymology of Yankee could be: that which has been yanked — a prick. As for the delightful word "Machtitschwanne," that's just another way to spell Massachusetts.
But to stick with the uprightly historical, Yankee is a word of uncertain origin, perhaps meaning slave or coward, perhaps excellent, and perhaps English. That's the OED. Wikipedia's entry for Yankee claims that "linguists" reject all the theories that the word comes from any Native American language.
Here's Wikipedia's article "Names for United States citizens," dealing with the pesky old problem of the inaccuracy of the term "Americans," which, taken literally, could refer to everyone on the continents of North and South America. That's nothing that could confuse anyone grounded in the real world, but the question of alternative terms remains amusing (or even important to someone looking to take offense at microagressions).
Several single-word English alternatives for "American" have been suggested over time, including "Usonian", popularized by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the nonce term "United-Statesian". The writer H. L. Mencken collected a number of proposals from between 1789 and 1939, finding terms including "Columbian", "Columbard", "Fredonian", "Frede", "Unisian", "United Statesian", "Colonican", "Appalacian", "USian", "Washingtonian", "Usonian", "Uessian", "U-S-ian", "Uesican", and "United Stater"."Yankee" is one more alternative, but only non-Americans see it as referring to all Americans, rather than only to non-Southerners. (I was going to say "only to non-Northerners," but it was only yesterday that were were talking about the notion that, in the U.S., "the North" consists of little more than Minnesota.)
Why am I writing about this today? It's a complete sidetrack from the subject you'll see in the next post.
Posts
31 comments:
I've seen a number of liberal college graduates, seeking to show how different they are from the great unwashed, refer to Americans as "USAians."
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=USAian
Someone who is clever might be able to predict the next blog post.
Alas, that is not me.
Damn Yankees? Bob Fosse?
My Dad once taught me how the word "Yankee" is properly used:
If you are a foreigner, a Yankee is anyone from the US.
If you are in the US, a Yankee is anyone from New England.
If you are in New England, a Yankee is anyone from Connecticut.
If you are in Connecticut, a Yankee is anyone who eats pie for breakfast.
American goes to Asia, asks the first man he sees, "What kind of -ese are you—Chinese, Japanese, or Javanese?"
Asian man replies, "I don't know. What kind of -key are you—Donkey, monkey, or Yankee?"
A few illiterate college professors aside, everyone knows that the term "American" refers to US citizens.
Trivia: in Germany, Americans are often (in writing) referred to as "US-American." Can't speak to other places.
If you ask our uniting-not-dividing ruling elite, "American" is synonymous with Earthling.
When the world feels the need to coin a term for people from the Western Hemisphere as a unique place, I guess they will, for now the terms North American, South American, and American, short for "United States of America -ian" will have to do.
When I see the term "UnitedStatesian" for example, it is used as a slur. I have only seen it used by people who hate the US, and often think we are a wholly owned subsidiary of Israel.
In "Last of the Mohicans" the word was pronounced that way by the French and Magua the treacherous Huron Indian. That movie (Mentioned in the historical movie thread) was noted for the exact accuracy of almost all the costumes and equipment used by the actors. The Indians were all played by American Indians and the white extras were played by reenact ors with period costumes and equipment. Daniel Day-Lewsi was coached by a re-enactor on his handling of the weapons, including how to reload a muzzle loader while running.
"Someone who is clever might be able to predict the next blog post."
The new post is up.
Impossible to imagine someone clever enough to have predicted that. You'd have had to have fixated on the word "Usonian" and leapt to this similar word "Usona."
No, that wouldn't even be clever. That would be freakishly miswired in a manner coinciding with mine. I would be quite afraid of anyone like that!
Only the reader who sent me the email had a shot at guessing right.
Next post - Derek Jeter?
Another source:
Yankee (n.) 1683, a name applied disparagingly by Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam (New York) to English colonists in neighboring Connecticut. It may be from Dutch Janke, literally "Little John," diminutive of common personal name Jan; or it may be from Jan Kes familiar form of "John Cornelius," or perhaps an alteration of Jan Kees, dialectal variant of Jan Kaas, literally "John Cheese," the generic nickname the Flemings used for Dutchmen.
[I]t is to be noted that it is common to name a droll fellow, regarded as typical of his country, after some favorite article of food, as E[nglish] Jack-pudding, G[erman] Hanswurst ("Jack Sausage"), F[rench] Jean Farine ("Jack Flour"). [Century Dictionary, 1902, entry for "macaroni"]
Yankee Doodle kept a feather in his hat and called it...
"Amuricans" is also the mocking way that Canadians react to yokels from the States claiming by their country's name to be the sole North American country. And on top of that daring to live under a revolutionary regime with no king, no class structure, and and way to much of everything else.
Things like idiotic complaining about the use of "Americans" is useful because it is a great signaling device to discount the rest of what the person is saying.
Confessions of a New York Yankee Groupie.
"So after some Chinese Take-Out I let Derek Jeter do me in the ass and in the morning he gives me a fruit basket. I said "Derek, what the hell is this?"
He says "It's a gift of my appreciation to you."
So I say "A fucking fruit basket? Am I your fucking grandmother?" And he says "No, no, it is from the heart. Look: it has pear slices."
And I say "Pear slices? I give you a rim job for thirty minutes and you give me pear slices?"
"Well, what would be appropriate?" he asks, all trying to be caring and shit.
So I say: "Appropriate? Jewelry would be appropriate, you asshole."
And he says, all sincere-like, "Well, it was just one night..." and I say "One night with a rim job and anal sex, you dick."
So he says "Okay, okay, I don't do this for just anyone" and he opens a drawer and pulls out a gold chain with a gold baseball hanging from it, real Kay Jewellers-type stuff. And I say "You got to be kidding: a charm bracelet?" And he says "It's not good enough?" And I say "Maybe if I was TWELVE, you jerk."
So Jeter opens another drawer and pulls out a pearl necklace, and I'm like "I get it, I get it: a pearl necklace, how appropriate."
So he says "That's all I can do," like we're haggling over a car.
"Then I say "I'll take it," because it is actually a pretty nice necklace, and that is my lesson to you women out there: when you give up the anal sex you better hold out for jewelry: don't let yourself be cheap.
I am Laslo.
@Michael K
If you are interested in muzzle loading techniques on the run, you should watch this video of a guy who can shoot three arrows in .6 seconds
He went back to ancient texts and recreated lost techniques for archery in battle. It is amazing. They guy wouldn't survive long against automatic weapons, true, but the video is just amazing.
From contemporary accounts, early battles with the Indians consisted of a few dozen people on each side. If mounted, the combatants would get off of their horses before shooting. They would fire their muskets and hide behind a tree while they reloaded. There was a lot of running away when outnumbered. The ability to reload while running was a valuable skill, sometimes the pursuers would simply give up when they saw that the pursued could reload while running. Scalps were taken by both sides.
The typical story (Kentucky, ~1760) would be something like this:
"Settler came back from working in his fields and found his family gone and his cabin looted. He roused the neighboring settlers and they appointed a captain. After three days pursuit they found the Indian war party. A battle ensued. Half the whites and half the Indians were killed, but the remaining Indians were routed and escaped by dropping their rifles and scattering or crossing a river. Scalps were taken from the fallen Indians. Some of the personal effects of the missing family members were found on the dead Indians, but the wife and children were never seen again."
I have only seen it used by people who hate the US, and often think we are a wholly owned subsidiary of Israel.
How prevalent is that in Europe?
From the French "Anglais" to the Native Americans with whom French missionaries and traders had contact. There the pronunciation corrupted by the idiosyncrasies of the native languages until the word acquired a "y" sound at the beginning and the "g" sounded more like a "k."
Rather obvious.
" They would fire their muskets and hide behind a tree while they reloaded. "
At one point in the battle of Gettysburg, the Union troops were getting really hard pressed and many of them fired before they had removed the ramrods from their rifles. A shower of ramrods flew through the air.
The repeating rifle in the Civil War was devastating and the Union Army had failed to buy the Henry rifle because they thought troops would waste ammunition. Many units raised the money and bought their own.
The word was used much earlier by the British to refer to the Dutch, and is therefore thought to be derived from "Janke" (the "J" is a "Y" in Germanic languages). It's a diminutive of the name "John" like "Johnny".
http://thepiratesdilemma.com/the-tao-of-pirates/etymology-of-a-yankee
English sailors were the first to apply the term to Dutch pirates in the Caribbean. Yankee Dutch (1683) was a noted noted Dutch pirate of the Spanish Main, as was Captain Yankey (1684), and Captain John Williams (nickname: Yankee) (1687). General James Wolfe, the British general who secured North America by defeating the French at Quebec in the 1750s, was the first to use it as a derogatory term for the New Englanders in his army.
Back when New York was known as New Amsterdam, the English began using the word as a derogatory term for all the Dutch settlers there. These same Dutch settlers later began using Yankee to refer to English settlers of Connecticut, because they saw their unfair trading practices as ‘piratical’ and unethical. The term was later used to refer to all New Englanders, and the first recorded use of the term by the British to refer to Americans in general appears in the 1780s, in a letter by Lord Horatio Nelson.
So the word was taken into American culture in order to convert a slur into an emblem of pride.
These words usually seem to start as a pejorative label and are adopted with pride by the targets.
These words usually seem to start as a pejorative label and are adopted with pride by the targets.
Which is why I thought the next post would be about "pejorative power" and perhaps the absence of "queer" from this post:
http://www.unz.com/isteve/pejorative-power/
Let's go with the pirate story.
I heard the story as the English settlers referring to the Dutch Junker estate owners along the Hudson River. Junker was corrupted to Yankee as a sly comment on the Dutch big landowners being general jerk-offs, yankers.
Texans call any american who is not from Texas a Yankee, even Southerners.
Before Texas became a state, citizens of the Republic were called Texians or Texicans.
I'd always heard that it derived from the Dutch for "John Cheese"--something close to "Jan Kaese", I imagine, but that's German, not Dutch.
Yankee is an interesting word, as it's meaning depends on who says it. If a foreigner says it, they mean "any American." If a southerner says it, they mean anyone from the North. If a northerner says it, they mean specifically a New Englander. And if a New Englander says it, they mean a player for the team they hate most.
Isn't it "Damn Yankee?"
@Michael K - Last of the Mohicans is one of my very favorite movies. A travesty it wasn't even nominated for Best Picture or Best Actor.
Another theory of the origin of Yankee:
Jonker (pronounced yonker) - 17th century Dutch term for a prosperous, land-owning farmer. German cognate - Junker. The world is remembered in the name of a city in New York, Yonkers.
@Michel K- Everything about Last of the Mohivans was accurate except the setting. You can see rhododendrons growing in the forest. They are not native to New York . Found that too distracting when watching te move. If they were so obsessive about accuracy, why not film in Upstate New York? Lord knows there's plenty of places there to film.
Post a Comment