Etymology of Manhattan

Common card · No. 450258

"Manhattan", first entering the colonial record in 1609, is one of the oldest indigenous place names still extant in the United States. Manhattan bears a particularly prominent toponym as the island on which New York City was founded, and a metonym for the city's power and influence. Its exact etymology is uncertain, but undoubtedly has its roots in the Munsee language of Lenapehoking. Possible meanings include that it is derived from the Lenape term for "island" itself or of some modified phrase, or that pars pro toto it originally referred only to the island's southern point, named after a hickory grove there. It was also sometimes in the past been attributed as an ethnonym of a local Lenape group, but this is almost certainly mistaken. Manhattoe/Manhattoes is a term describing a place and, mistakenly, a people. The location was the very southern tip of the Manhattan island during the time of the Dutch colonization of the Americas at what became New Amsterdam there. The people were...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Johannes Vingboons (cartographer), Jacques Cortelyou (surveyor), Public domain