page_title: Yankee
section_title: Dutch origin
hierarchical_section_title: Yankee / Origin and history of the word / Dutch origin
caption_attribution_description: Map showing the area claimed by the Dutch in North-American and several Dutch settlements
context_page_description: The term Yankee and its contracted form Yank have several interrelated meanings, all referring to people from the United States; its various senses depend on the context. Outside the United States, Yank is used informally to refer to any American, including Southerners. Within the Southern United States, Yankee is a derisive term which refers to all Northerners, or specifically to those from the region of New England. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is "a nickname for a native or inhabitant of New England, or, more widely, of the northern States generally"; during the American Civil War, it was "applied by the Confederates to the soldiers of the Union army".
  Elsewhere in the United States, it largely refers to people from the Northeastern states, but especially those with New England cultural ties, such as descendants of colonial New England settlers, wherever they live. Its sense is sometimes more cultural than geographical, emphasizing the Calvinist Puritan Christian beliefs and traditions of the Congregationalists who brought their culture when they settled outside New England.
context_section_description: Most linguists look to Dutch language sources, noting the extensive interaction between the Dutch colonists in New Netherland (now largely New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and western Connecticut) and the English colonists in New England (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and eastern Connecticut). The exact application, however, is uncertain; some scholars suggest that it was a term used in derision of the Dutch colonists, others that it was derisive of the English colonists.
  Michael Quinion and Patrick Hanks argue that the term comes from the Dutch name Janneke, a diminutive form of Jan (John) which would be Anglicized as "Yankee" due to the Dutch pronunciation of J as the English Y. Quinion and Hanks posit that it was "used as a nickname for a Dutch-speaking American in colonial times" and could have grown to include non-Dutch colonists, as well. Alternatively, the Dutch given names Jan (Dutch: [jɑn]) and Kees (Dutch: [keːs]) have long been common, and the two are sometimes combined into a single name (e.g., Jan Kees de Jager). Its Anglicized spelling Yankee could, in this way, have been used to mock Dutch colonists. The chosen name Jan Kees may have been partly inspired by a dialectal rendition of Jan Kaas ("John Cheese"), the generic nickname that Southern Dutch used for Dutch people living in the North.
  The Online Etymology Dictionary gives its origin as around 1683, when English colonists used it insultingly in reference to Dutch colonists (especially freebooters). Linguist Jan de Vries notes that there was mention of a pirate named Dutch Yanky in the 17th century. The Life and Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves (1760) contains the passage, "Haul forward thy chair again, take thy berth, and proceed with thy story in a direct course, without yawing like a Dutch yanky." According to this theory, Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam started using the term against the English colonists of neighboring Connecticut.
caption: New Netherland is to the northwest, and New England is to the northeast.
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