Who knew? The origin of the word Brooklyn is sort of accidental. It is the anglicization of the word Breukelen -- which is the name of a town in the province of Utrecht in the Netherlands. Dutch settlers named their settlement on the western end of Long Island Breukelen after the town in their homeland, and when the English took over rule of New Amsterdam, the residents changed the spelling of Breukelen to Brooklyn. In the same way, many, many Dutch words became the English names for places in the New Amsterdam (which became New York) area. A couple of examples of things that still strongly bear their Dutch history in their names: many sources think Coney Island is thought to be named after rabbits....the Dutch word for rabbit is konjin, pronounced, roughly, con yeen. Another example is Red Hook -- originally named Roode Hoek, which, in Dutch, means Red Point -- a reference to the red clay of the area and the point of land that juts out into the harbor. In addition to place names, the Dutch gave us a lot of words that became very common in post-Dutch New York, and the world. The word cookie comes from the Dutch word koekje, the word boss comes from the Dutch word baas and koolsla, which literally means cabbage salad became coleslaw.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 18:38:13 +0000