Talk:Yankee

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I've removed the opening sentence to this article 2 times due to gross errors that need to be discussed here, if it appears a third time is will be a 3rd revision for the author of that sentence, so I'm bringing it here. The sentence, to the best of my memory, said Yankees "were people whose ancestors arrived from Great Britain before 1700." This is wrong for the following reasons. This is only a partial list of reasons:

1. Nothing happened in 1700 making this a date of any significance, it is merely an arbitrary date, and clearly too early, as English settlers who arrived here long after this date were still called Yankees. Many American soldiers during the revolution were first generation Brits, yet they were Yankees.

2. Great Britain includes North Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, I think the term specifically refers to English setlers.

3. The term "Yankee" was origianlly used of the Dutch, who were the Jans and Jankes of the colonies. Why would anybody refer to an Englishman as Jan? Even more to the point, why would a DUTCHMAN refer to an Englishman as Jan? Use your heads, folks, please! People sometimes refer to others by the most common of their common names. Thus, Irishmen were Micks, Spanish were Diegos, English were John Bull, and of course, the Dutch were Jan and Janke. I don't understand why anybody would think a Dutchman would call an Englishman Janke. It would be like a German calling somebody Otto. Are you kidding? The original Yankees were Dutch and the term was used by British nationals, not British colonists. All early references of the term show that it was used by English sailors, who called us colonists Yankees because so many of our sailors had Dutch names. The Dutch as a people are a maritime people, and in America they rans the ports and built the ships, even after the colonies became British. It's so simple. English people sailing for the Crown had to find some little thing about the colonists that made us different from them, so they could use a term to poke fun at us, insult us, pick fights with us, or just rib us, because sailors were a rough bunch and liked to joke around, drunk on rum as they often were, and one obvious thing about us that made us different from them was the number of us with Dutch names, mostly in New York, which was the biggest port in the northeast, and was the port where Dutch nationals traded heavily with the English nationals, via the colonists, both of English and Dutch decent, sending sugar and rum from Dutch colonies in the Carribean, through the ports of the northern American colonies, mainly New York, which was favored by Dutch nationals because they were run by Dutch Americans, as opposed to the English ports in Virginia etc which had no Dutch, and the rum was shipped back to England for the limeys to get drunk on. So there you go, they called us Jan and Janke. And there were Dutch in New England too, so, we were lumped together, all northern colonists, as Yankees. Virginia colonists were never called Yankees, because they had no Dutch. Earth to Wiki editors, please use your heads now. Don't you get it yet? It's really simple. The New York Yankees are more than a baseball team, 200 years earlier they were Dutch colonists, and the first Yankees were New Yorkers. But the Dutch rejected the term because it was offensive, while New Englanders borrowed and embraced the term. I don't know what can be easier to understand than this. Even a cave man can do it! How can I make this more clear??? And please don't make me cite references or I'll hit you over the head with a bottle of rum.

Morgan Wright 04:04, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


Please edit!  I added the link since there wasn't one, but don't know anything about the subject.

--Ben Brumfield

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable has origins of 'yankee':

[1]

I think Brewer is out of copyright, otherwise it wouldn't be on Bertelby.com... not sure though...

-- AndyE

PS Seems like it's definitely in the public domain, not sure about the accuracy of the the derivation though. It says

-begin quote

A corruption of “English.” The word got into general use thus: In 1713 one Jonathan Hastings, a farmer at Cambridge, in New York, used the word as a puffing epithet, meaning genuine, American-made, what cannot be surpassed, etc.; as, a “Yankee horse,” “Yankee cider,” and so on. The students of the college, catching up the term, called Hastings “Yankee Jonathan.” It soon spread, and became the jocose pet name of the New Englander. Since then the term has been extended to any American of the Northern States. (Indian corruption of Anglais or English, thus: Yengees, Yenghis, Yanghis, Yankees.)

Yankee Doodle is Nankee Doodle (Oliver Cromwell), who went to Oxford “with a single feather fastened in a macaroni knot,” whence the rhyme—

Nankee Doodle came to town upon his little pony, Stuck a feather in his hat, and called it macaroni.”

The brigade under Lord Percy marched out of Boston playing this air “by way of contempt,” but were told they should dance to it soon in another spirit.

- end quote

Contents

[edit] Associated with....?

other parts of the world, particularly Latin America, yankee or yanqui is meant as an insult and is politically associated with anti-imperialism and used in expressions such as "Yankee go home".

This is very ambiguous wording, I assume this is saying the "Yankee" is seen as an imperalist? Or that the Yankee is imposing anti-imperalist views? Nagelfar 05:46, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Jan Kees, Yeah right! ;-)

Taken from article:

The etymology is uncertain; one suggestion is that it derives from Dutch Janke, diminutive of Jan (John), or Jan Kees, for "John Cheese", a nickname for English settlers bestowed by the Dutch in the early days of New York City. The phrase was probably popularized by the English in the song Yankee Doodle Dandee to describe New Yorkers, and perhaps, all (Northern) Americans in the colonies.

  • In dutch, Janken = To Cry
  • Jan Kees -> Johan Cornelis -> Joh(a)n Cornelius.

Cheese = Kaas

Dutch would call English settlers John Cheese? Well, dutch folks are often called cheeseheads (because of their smell I think :-| ), so that part would more likely be the other way around.

Hmm, is the above original research perhaps? Could anyone provide a cite?

Kim Bruning 21:08, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Use your head folks, The DUTCH were called Jan and Janke, not the other way around! A Dutchman calling somebody Jan or Janke is like a German calling sombody Otto or an Irishman calling somebody Mick. It's so obvious.

Morgan Wright 11:15, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

The dutch wikipedia puts it the other way round. Dutch folks are often called "Jan" or "Kees", so the english might have used "The Jan And Kees-es" - yankees for short. Hmmm, could be. Does sound rather more likely? Kim Bruning 21:12, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Keep it simple

Most of these etymologies were guesses by editors sitting in a chair, probably outside New England, in offices not very well decorated by books, trying to come up with something to plug into their dictionaries for this famous term when, research-wise, they had no idea. As a result their guesses are very contorted, even wild. The simplest is the one deriving from Algonquin. It needs some well-to-do researcher with time on his hands to have a great time going around checking out all the local records and then writing a fine article or book on it.Botteville 13:17, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] I'm not buying it

There's no source on this "chronic masturbation" paragraph at the start. I'm removing it until it gets sourced. Rob 12:48, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

By all means, it looks like bullshit. Sylvain1972 17:25, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] yankee migration to the west coast

What? Huhh? Someone Yankeeing my chain? This sounds like total BS.

[edit] Yankee currency in Ecuador

I removed the bit about Ecuadorians calling dollars "yankees" because in the 3 1/2 years that I lived and worked there, I never heard this term used; nor has my Ecuadorian housemate. lwilson4 19:25 03 June 2006

[edit] Contradiction

The article says the first use of the word to refer to Americans generally came in the 1880s, but there's a cartoon right beside that claim from the 1770s. 24.29.134.41 19:41, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Diane Sawyer version

In October 2006, during visit to North Korea, she claimed "yankee" is Chinese for "ocean demon"

[edit] Twang

It's true that it's a sourced statement, but sourced only to David Hackett Fischer. Fischer is a great cultural historian, but he's not a linguist at all, and he's only describing what non-linguists believe about the "Yankee twang". Two main problems: (1) "Yankee twang" is literally meaningless. "Twang" is a word that gets tossed around a lot for describing regional accents by people who don't know anything about accents, but it doesn't have any information about any of the actual qualities of accents. (2) Because of this, Fischer has no evidence that the "old Yankee twang" he describes is actually "old"—that is to say, that the rural New England dialect of today is unchanged sice what earlier writers have described as a "twang". I'd accept it with a more objective formulation like "The characteristic dialects of New England maintain their strongest form in the hill towns of interior New England, and have been described impressionistically as a 'Yankee twang'." AJD 14:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

we at Wiki rely on the best scholarship and not our own notions. Fischer is a leading expert on the Yankees with many books--one winning a Pulitzer Prize. Is there some alternative scholarship to cite????

[edit] "Yankee"

This article seems to give the impression that the word "Yankee" is used often in the US, it is extremly rare to refer to another American (from any region) as a "Yankee" and absolutly never a "Yank".

Have you spent much time in the South? It's still fairly commonly used there to describe Northerners. Funnyhat 06:07, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Agree. In the South "Yankee" means a non-Southerner and is used constantly.141.166.112.252 21:48, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Have you ever been to Vermont? They have a magazine called Yankee Magazine, for some reason the Vermonters are proud to call themselves Yankees, and they call everybody else Flatlanders. Except New Hampshire people, they tolerate NH people, but hate everybody else, especially New Yorkers

Morgan Wright 18:51, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] seppo

seppo is widely used in Australia as well as yank, I am having difficulty trying to incorporate into the seppo paragraph if someone could help me with it would be great I've also found a source here http://www.australiatravelsearch.com.au/trc/slang.html cheers Bnsbeaver 12:33, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Strine

"Strine" means "Australian" as in "the Australian language", not as in "a person from Australia" (see [2]). The word is misused in the article; deleting. — Paul G 16:52, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Modern Yankee Politicians

Neither John Kerry nor Hillary Clinton seem to defintely qualify as Yankees. Clinton does not appear to have colonial northeastern ancestry. Although Kerry is a Roman Catholic Democrat, it seems like a better case could be made for him, as a member of the Protestant Forbes Family on his mother's side. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Clinton isn't Yankee, according to her autobiography. John FORBES Kerry is scion of the Forbes family, one of the oldest and most important Yankee families.Rjensen 23:46, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Yankee: usage to designate an ethnic group

On "Yankees" as an ethnic group, see Oscar Handlin, "Yankees," in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, ed. by Stephan Thernstrom, (1980) pp 1028-1030. The term is commonly used for a person of New England descent, including those living elsewhere who continue the heritage. Thus books like Yankees in Paradise: The New England Impact on Hawaii by Bradford Smith (1956); Black Yankees: The Development of an Afro-American Subculture in Eighteenth-Century New England (1988)by William Dillon Piersen; A Yankee in Creole Country by Elizabeth Gentry Sayad (2004); Yankees and Yorkers (1940) by Dixon R. Fox. about New York State; They Chose Minnesota: a survey of the state's ethnic groups by J. Holmquist )1988) has a chapter on the Yankees. David M. Ellis looked at Yankee-Dutch tensions in the Albany NY in his article on "Yankee-Dutch Confrontation" (1972)' Joseph Schafer in 1931 wrote of "Yankee-Teuton Rivalry in Wisconsin" in the 1870s. Rjensen 08:29, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the article makes note of that.Sylvain1972 13:49, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] In Colombia

In Colombia Yankee is called sometimes to a person that is big.. muscles... --Azuero 07:05, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Yank "...mistakenly applied to Canadians"

I've removed the following phrase, referring to the term "Yank," from the lead:

...and is sometimes mistakenly applied to Canadians. Canadians travelling abroad took to wearing maple leaf pins to avoid misidentification.

The references given for this statement are: [3], [4], and [5] and [6]

My problem with this statement, particularly in the lead, is that it refers to anti-Americanism generally, rather than the term "Yank." Not that that Yank isn't used pejoratively, it is, as the article later makes clear. However, the references do not support the idea that the term is mistakenly applied to Canadians.

The first reference is from a reliable source and would be valid if it supported the contention that the term is mistakenly applied to Canadians, but it doesn't do that. As to the others, blogs do not constitute valid references.

This article, ranked as a "start class" article, evidently needs some work. I have some concerns with the lead generally, but lets get this cleared up first. Discussion? Sunray 15:06, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Blogs certainly count when we are documenting actual usage by irdinary people. Rjensen 18:43, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps they could be referred to in notes to show usage, but surely not used as references. We need a citation for this. Sunray 18:49, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
why do we need an academic citation whgen we have blog evidence from ordinary people--this is a matter of everyday usage. Rjensen 18:58, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Academic citation? Why would we need an academic citation? Surely we would just need a statement from a reliable source that says that Canadians frequently get called "Yank." The problem with blogs is that they are anecdotal: Someone says: "I got called 'Yank,'" or "...someone I know was called 'Yank.'" The problem is with generalizing from this. We can't tell how common it is. Sure Canadians get mistaken for Americans. What does that have to do with the term "Yank?" Sunray 19:32, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with the Canadian point so I reinserted it. It adds to the article. Morgan Wright 02:11, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe that it is true. I've never seen any evidence of it. So I have asked for a citation that verifies that it is a common occurrence for Canadians to be called "Yank." Check out the policy on attribution:
"...Although everything in Wikipedia must be attributable, in practice not all material is attributed. Editors should provide attribution for quotations and for any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, or it may be removed. The burden of evidence lies with the editor wishing to add or retain the material."
If you read further in the policy under the heading "Using questionable or self-published sources," you will note that blogs are not evidence. I've asked for a citation from a reliable source that says that Canadians are sometimes mistakenly called "Yank." Please oblige. Sunray 07:05, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
we have signed statements by Canadians that they are called Yanks. That's what evidence of usage looks like. Rjensen 13:58, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm not saying that no Canadian was ever called "Yank," I'm just saying that one, or five, or fifteen cases of this do not make it a social phenomenon worthy of mention in an encyclopedia. On the other hand, if it is a common occurence, it is likely that someone has written about it in some medium that is subject to peer review or publication standards. Just find that cite and we're done. Sunray 15:44, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Yankee not people of English ancestry

People need to study the origin of the word to understand why we cannot point to 17th century British colonists as the original Yankees. Too much of the writing in this article is about early British colonists, 1610 and on, yet those people were never called Yankees at the time, they were universlly called English. The Yankees of the 17th century were the Dutch, and there is NO EVIDENCE that the term was ever used for the British until the late 18th century, so please, people, let's lay off all the writings of the early colonization of New England by the English, from Plymouth Plantation on, because this article is about Yankees. New England had no Yankees until they started calling themselves Yankees during the revolution when the British army referred to all the colonists by the previously insulting term they had used for the Dutch. If you went back the the 17th century and asked people in Boston about the Yankees, they would point to the guys with the little pointy hats named Jan Van Ten Broek and Pieter VanRensselaer, not the Smiths and the Jonses. Get your history straight. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Morgan Wright (talk • contribs) 02:21, 6 April 2007 (UTC). Morgan Wright 02:23, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

More examples. "It is the hat badge of the Canadian Armoured Carrier Regiment from WW2. They complained that in England they were constantly mistaken for Aussies......until the spoke and then they were mistaken for Yanks." at [7]; or "Canadians take it as an insult though. They're often called 'Yanks' too." at [8]. Australians too: "It's a real worry that Aussies in Europe are now being tagged "New Yanks"." at [9] Rjensen 14:25, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
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