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54-828: New Englanders , also called Yankees , are the inhabitants of the New England region in the Northeastern United States . Beginning with the New England Colonies , the name "New Englander" refers to those who live in the six New England states or those with cultural or family ties to the region. The region was originally inhabited by Algonquin Indigenous peoples , including the Abenakis , Mi'kmaq , Penobscot , Pequots , Mohegans , Narragansetts , Pocumtucks , and Wampanoag . The region

108-593: A Yankee is a Vermonter. And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast. Major League Baseball's New York Yankees acquired the name from journalists after the team moved from Baltimore in 1903, though they were officially known as the Highlanders until 1913. The regional Yankees–Red Sox rivalry can make the utterance of the term "Yankee" unwelcome to some fans in New England, especially to

162-564: A bloody battle, and the remaining Yankoo Indians transferred their name to the victors—who were "agreeable to the Indian custom". Sonneck notes that multiple American writers since 1775 had repeated this story as if it were fact, despite what he perceived to be holes in it. It had never been the tradition of any Indian tribe to transfer their name to other peoples, according to Sonneck, nor had any settlers ever adopted an Indian name to describe themselves. Sonneck concludes by pointing out that there

216-473: A crewman from North Carolina nicknamed him with that epithet. The term Yankee can have many different meanings within the United States that are contextually and geographically dependent. Traditionally, Yankee was most often used to refer to a New Englander descended from the settlers of the region, thus often suggesting Puritanism and thrifty values. By the mid-20th century, some speakers applied

270-541: 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, attributing it to English colonists insultingly referring to Dutch colonists. English privateer William Dampier relates his dealings in 1681 with Dutch privateer Captain Yanky or Yanke. Linguist Jan de Vries notes that there

324-483: A strong moral obligation to define and enforce standards of community and personal behavior…. This pietistic worldview was substantially shared by British, Scandinavian, Swiss, English-Canadian and Dutch Reformed immigrants, as well as by German Protestants and many of the Forty-Eighters . Yankees dominated New England, much of upstate New York, and much of the upper Midwest, and were the strongest supporters of

378-431: A strong regional identity and a distinct history and culture within the United States. The region was named "New England" by English explorer John Smith in 1616. While the term "New Englander" can refer to anyone who resides in New England or has cultural ties to the region, the term "Native New Englander" refers to those New Englanders who were born in the region. Another term to refer to those who live in New England

432-453: Is " Yankee ". Depending on the context Yankee may refer to all Americans in general, but in the colloquial American context, it refers to those who live in the Northeastern United States and even more specifically New England. Originally employed to describe New Englanders with ancestral roots to the original English settlers , the term has evolved throughout American history to have a variety of contextual meanings. Yankee Outside

486-629: Is disappearing even there. Mark Twain's 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court popularized the word as a nickname for residents of Connecticut, and Connecticut Air National Guard unit 103d Airlift Wing is nicknamed "The Flying Yankees." The shortened form Yank is used as a derogatory, pejorative, playful, or colloquial term for Americans in Britain, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Ireland, and New Zealand. The full Yankee may be considered mildly derogatory, depending on

540-624: Is editor in chief of the Dictionary of American Family Names (3 volumes, OUP 2003), and is co-author with Flavia Hodges and Kate Hardcastle of the Oxford Dictionary of First Names (1990, 2006). He was section editor for lexicography in the second edition of the Elsevier Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (ELL2; 2005), edited by Keith Brown, for which he commissioned survey articles on lexicography in all

594-618: Is presumed to have no where else on the Globe a permanent local habitation, however ubiquitous he may be in his travels and pursuits. Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas pointed out as late as 1966, "The very word 'Yankee' still wakens in Southern minds historical memories of defeat and humiliation, of the burning of Atlanta and Sherman's March to the Sea , or of an ancestral farmhouse burned by Quantrill's Raiders ". Ambrose Bierce defines

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648-413: Is sometimes used as a pejorative reference to Americans. In Finland, the word jenkki is sometimes used to refer to any American citizen, and Jenkkilä refers to the United States itself. It is not considered offensive or anti-American, but rather a colloquial expression. In Sweden, the word jänkare is a derivative of Yankee that is used to refer to both American citizens and classic American cars from

702-615: 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 Janneke , a diminutive form of the given name Jan which would be Anglicized by New Englanders as "Yankee" due to the Dutch pronunciation of J being the same as the English Y . Quinion and Hanks posit that it

756-535: The Korean War periods, Korean black markets that sold smuggled American goods from military bases were called "yankee markets" ( Korean :  양키시장 ). The term "yankee" is now generally viewed as an anti-American slur in South Korea , and is often used in the exclamation "Yankee go home!" ( 『양키 고 홈!』 ). Linguistic Patrick Hanks Patrick Wyndham Hanks (24 March 1940 – 1 February 2024)

810-550: The battles of Lexington and Concord . Today, "Yankee Doodle" is the official state song of Connecticut. An early use of the term outside the United States was in the creation of Sam Slick the "Yankee Clockmaker" in a newspaper column in Halifax , Nova Scotia , in 1835. The character was a plain-speaking American who becomes an example for Nova Scotians to follow in his industry and practicality; his uncouth manners and vanity were qualities that his creator detested. The character

864-641: The 1950s that are popular in rural Sweden. In the late 19th century, the Japanese were called "the Yankees of the East" in praise of their industriousness and drive to modernization. In Japan, the term yankī ( ヤンキー ) has been used since the late 1970s to refer to a type of delinquent youth associated with motorcycle gangs and frequently sporting dyed blond hair. Around the American occupation of Korea and

918-906: The Collocations Project and Electronic Dictionary of the German Language (DWDS) at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (BBAW) headed by Christiane Fellbaum . He has also served as a consultant on lexicographical methodology to the Institute of the Czech Language in Prague, to Patakis Publishers in Athens, and others. Patrick Hanks was the author of many papers on lexical analysis , lexicography , onomastics , and similes and metaphor . He

972-620: The Congregationalists who brought their culture when they settled outside New England. The speech dialect of Eastern New England English is called "Yankee" or "Yankee dialect". Most linguists look to Dutch language sources, noting the extensive interaction between the Dutch colonists in New Netherland (parts of New York, New Jersey, and Delaware) and the English colonists in New England ( Massachusetts , Rhode Island , and Connecticut ). The exact application, however,

1026-716: The Federal Government was controlled by bigoted Yankees and Irish who banded together against the Italian immigrant. The one anomaly of this era was the election of Yankee Republican Leverett Saltonstall as governor in 1938, and even then Saltonstall jokingly attributed his high vote totals in Irish districts to his 'South Boston face'. In the Southern United States, the term is used in derisive reference to any Northerner, especially one who has migrated to

1080-598: The French l'anglais , meaning "the Englishman" or "the English language", which was sounded as Y'an-gee . American musicologist Oscar Sonneck debunked a romanticized false etymology in his 1909 work Report on "The Star-Spangled Banner", "Hail Columbia", "America", "Yankee Doodle" . He cited a popular theory that claimed the word came from a tribe who called themselves Yankoos , said to mean "invincible". The story claimed that New Englanders had defeated this tribe after

1134-708: The South and maintains derisive attitudes towards Southerners and the Southern way of life. Alabama lawyer and author Daniel Robinson Hundley describes the Yankee as such in Social Relations in Our Southern States : Yankee with all these is looked upon usually as a term of reproach—signifying a shrewd, sharp, chaffering, oily-tongued, soft-sawdering, inquisitive, money-making, money-saving, and money-worshipping individual, who hails from Down East, and who

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1188-680: The United States, Yank is used informally to refer to a person or thing from the US. It has been especially popular in the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand where it may be used variously, either with an uncomplimentary overtone, endearingly, or cordially. In the Southern United States , Yankee is a derisive term which refers to all Northerners, and during the American Civil War it

1242-548: The country. The Spanish variation yanqui is used in Latin American Spanish, often derogatorily. Venezuelan Spanish has the word pitiyanqui derived around 1940 from petit yankee or petit yanqui , a derogatory term for those who profess an exaggerated and often ridiculous admiration for anything from the United States. In the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia, the term seppo , shortened from traditional rhyming slang yank ==> septic tank ,

1296-534: The development of one of the earliest search engines ( AltaVista ). On the basis of the COBUILD and HECTOR research in corpus analysis, Hanks began to develop his theory of Norms and Exploitations. From 2001 to 2005, he was adjunct professor of computational lexicography at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA, where he worked closely with James Pustejovsky . In 2003, he was appointed consultant and visiting scientist to

1350-421: The earliest recorded use of the word "Yankee" in 1758 when he referred to the New England soldiers under his command. "I can afford you two companies of Yankees, and the more, because they are better for ranging and scouting than either work or vigilance". Later British use of the word was in a derogatory manner, as seen in a cartoon published in 1775 ridiculing "Yankee" soldiers. New Englanders themselves employed

1404-640: The empirical procedure of Corpus Pattern Analysis , which links word meaning to patterns of word use and systematically distinguishes patterns of normal usage from creative uses. After a year in Prague at the Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics, Charles University , Prague, he returned to England as lead researcher on the FaNUK project in the Bristol Centre for Linguistics in the University of

1458-680: The former prevail wherever the latter are found. Although the genuine Yankee belongs to New England, the term "Yankee" is now as appropriate to the natives of the Union at large. Yankees settled other states in various ways: some joined highly organized colonization companies, others purchased groups of land together; some joined volunteer land settlement groups, and self-reliant individual families also migrated. Yankees typically lived in villages consisting of clusters of separate farms. Often they were merchants, bankers, teachers, or professionals. Village life fostered local democracy, best exemplified by

1512-526: The late 1860s to educate the Freedmen . Historian John Buenker has examined the worldview of the Yankee settlers in the Midwest: Because they arrived first and had a strong sense of community and mission, Yankees were able to transplant New England institutions, values, and mores, altered only by the conditions of frontier life. They established a public culture that emphasized the work ethic,

1566-575: The late colonial period, many became Presbyterians , Episcopalians , Methodists , or, later, Unitarians . Strait-laced 17th-century moralism as derided by novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne faded in the 18th century. The First Great Awakening under Jonathan Edwards and others in the mid-18th century, and the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century under Charles Grandison Finney and others emphasized personal piety, revivals, and devotion to civic duty. A pervasive influence on

1620-424: The modern Yankee stereotype. Coolidge moved from rural Vermont to urban Massachusetts and was educated at elite Amherst College . Yet his flint-faced, unprepossessing ways and terse rural speech proved politically attractive. "That Yankee twang will be worth a hundred thousand votes", explained one Republican leader. Coolidge's laconic ways and dry humor were characteristic of stereotypical rural "Yankee humor" at

1674-426: The most dedicated Red Sox fans living in the northeastern United States. The term Swamp Yankee is sometimes used in rural Rhode Island, Connecticut, and southeastern Massachusetts to refer to Protestant farmers of moderate means and their descendants, although it is often regarded as a derogatory term. Scholars note that the famous Yankee "twang" survives mainly in the hill towns of interior New England, though it

New Englanders - Misplaced Pages Continue

1728-694: The new Republican party in the 1860s. This was especially true for the Congregationalists , Presbyterians , and Methodists among them. A study of 65 predominantly Yankee counties showed that they voted only 40 percent for the Whigs in 1848 and 1852, but became 61–65 percent Republican in presidential elections of 1856 through 1864. Ivy League universities remained bastions of old Yankee culture until well after World War II , particularly Harvard and Yale . President Calvin Coolidge exemplified

1782-519: The northeast, while wealthy New Englanders also sent ambassadors to frontier communities where they became influential bankers and newspaper printers. They introduced the term "Universal Yankee Nation" to proselytize their hopes for national and global influence. New England Yankees originally followed the Puritan tradition, as expressed in Congregational and Baptist churches. Beginning in

1836-407: The open town meeting form of government that still exists today in New England. Village life also stimulated mutual oversight of moral behavior and emphasized civic virtue. The Yankees built international trade routes stretching to China by 1800 from the New England seaports of Boston , Salem , Providence , Newport , and New London , among others. Much of the profit from trading was reinvested in

1890-439: The sanctity of private property, individual responsibility, faith in residential and social mobility, practicality, piety, public order and decorum, reverence for public education, activists, honest, and frugal government, town meeting democracy, and he believed that there was a public interest that transcends particular and stock ambitions. Regarding themselves as the elect and just in a world rife with sin and corruption, they felt

1944-482: The summer of 1988 and 1989, he was a visiting scientist at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he co-authored with Ken Church influential papers on corpus-based statistical methods in lexical analysis. Hanks died on 1 February 2024, at the age of 83. From 1990 to 2000, Hanks served as chief editor of current English dictionaries at Oxford University Press (OUP). In 1991 to 1992, he

1998-617: The term in The Devil's Dictionary as: "In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown. (See DAMNYANK.)" E. B. White humorously draws his own distinctions: To foreigners, a Yankee is an American. To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner. To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner. To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander. To New Englanders,

2052-423: The textile and machine tools industries. After 1800, Yankees spearheaded most American reform movements, including those for the abolition of slavery, temperance in use of alcohol, increase in women's political rights, and improvement in women's education. Emma Willard and Mary Lyon pioneered in the higher education of women, while Yankees comprised most of the reformers who went South during Reconstruction in

2106-421: The turn of the 20th century. Yankee ingenuity was a worldwide stereotype of inventiveness, technical solutions to practical problems, "know-how," self-reliance, and individual enterprise. The stereotype first appeared in the 19th century. As Mitchell Wilson notes, "Yankee ingenuity and Yankee git-up-and-go did not exist in colonial days." The great majority of Yankees gravitated toward the burgeoning cities of

2160-549: The use of the term throughout the years has been the song "Yankee Doodle" which was popular during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). The song originated among the British troops during the French and Indian or Seven Years' War, creating a stereotype of the Yankee simpleton who stuck a feather in his cap and thought that he was stylish, but it was rapidly re-appropriated by American patriots after

2214-588: The word Yankee , but modern linguists generally reject theories that suggest it originated in any Indigenous languages. This includes a theory put forth by a British officer in 1789, who said that it was derived from the Cherokee word eankke meaning "coward"—despite the fact that no such word existed in the Cherokee language. Another theory surmised that the word was borrowed from the Wyandot pronunciation of

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2268-473: The word in a neutral sense; the " Pennamite–Yankee War ", for example, was a series of clashes in 1769 over land titles in Pennsylvania between settlers from Connecticut Colony and "Pennamite" settlers from Pennsylvania . The meaning of Yankee has varied over time. In the 18th century, it referred to residents of New England descended from the original English settlers of the region. Mark Twain used

2322-757: The word in this sense the following century in his 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court . As early as the 1770s, British people applied the term to any person from the United States. In the 19th century, Americans in the southern United States employed the word in reference to Americans from the northern United States, though not to recent immigrants from Europe. Thus, a visitor to Richmond, Virginia , commented in 1818, "The enterprising people are mostly strangers; Scots, Irish, and especially New England men, or Yankees, as they are called". Historically, it has also been used to distinguish American-born Protestants from later immigrants, such as Catholics of Irish descent. Many etymologies have been suggested for

2376-518: The word to any American inhabiting the area north of the Mason–Dixon Line , though usually with a specific focus still on New England. New England Yankee might be used to differentiate. However, within New England itself, the term still refers more specifically to old-stock New Englanders of English descent. For example: Certainly the Irish have for years complained of Yankee discrimination against them. There were no civil rights groups then. Even

2430-479: The world's major languages and on major issues in lexicography and lexicology. He edited a multivolume collection covering all aspects of lexicology for Routledge , and, with Rachel Giora, a companion collection covering all aspects of metaphor and figurative language. From 2005 to 2009 he was a senior research associate at the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University , Brno , Czech Republic , where he developed

2484-577: Was "used as a nickname for a Dutch-speaking American in colonial times" and could have grown to include non-Dutch colonists, as well. The Oxford English Dictionary calls this theory "perhaps the most plausible". 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 (Jan Kees). 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

2538-509: Was an English lexicographer , corpus linguist , and onomastician . He edited dictionaries of general language, as well as dictionaries of personal names . Hanks was educated at Ardingly College , University College, Oxford (BA, MA), and Masaryk University (PhD). After graduation from Oxford, he started his lexicographic career as editor of the Hamlyn Encyclopedic World Dictionary (1971). In 1970, he

2592-618: Was applied by Confederates to soldiers of the Union army in general. 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

2646-473: Was appointed editor of Collins English Dictionary (1979). From 1980 to 1983, he was director of the Names Research Unit of the University of Essex , England, where he began a PhD under the supervision of Yorick Wilks . In 1983, he was appointed managing editor of COBUILD , and in 1987 he took on the additional role of chief editor of English dictionaries for Collins (now HarperCollins ). In

2700-474: Was developed by Thomas Chandler Haliburton , and it grew between 1836 and 1844 in a series of publications. The damned Yankee usage dates from 1812. Confederates popularized it as a derogatory term for their Northern enemies during and after the American Civil War (1861–1865). Rhode Island Governor Bruce Sundlun had been a pilot in World War II, and he named his B-17F bomber Damn Yankee because

2754-566: Was first settled by European colonists from the Mayflower as part of the Plymouth Company in 1620. The region has seen many different waves of immigration since 1620, creating a unique and diverse culture. New Englanders have played a prominent role in the colonial and modern history of the United States, from political dynasties to influential artists and writers. Famous for their distinct dialect and attitude, New Englanders hold

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2808-681: Was joint principal investigator (with Mary-Claire van Leunen) of the HECTOR project at the Systems Research Center of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in Palo Alto, CA. The HECTOR project was a collaboration between OUP and DEC, and although its results were never published, they served as a basis for the New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998), while the lexicographers working on it were also guinea-pig users in

2862-459: 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. British General James Wolfe made

2916-667: Was never a tribe called the Yankoos . The original Yankees diffused widely across the northern United States, leaving their imprints in New York, the Upper Midwest , many taking advantage of water routes by the Great Lakes , and places as far away as Seattle , San Francisco , and Honolulu . Yankeeism is the general character of the Union. Yankee manners are as migratory as Yankee men. The latter are found everywhere and

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