Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: $Revision: 1.6.2.16 $; site ISM780.UUCP
Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!qantel!lll-crg!gymble!umcp-cs!seismo!harvard!talcott!panda!genrad!decvax!yale!ISM780!jim
From: jim@ISM780.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: One for our side (gringo)
Message-ID: <37400010@ISM780.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 28-Nov-85 15:42:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ISM780.37400010
Posted: Thu Nov 28 15:42:00 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 30-Nov-85 20:59:50 EST
References: <775@cornell.UUCP>
Lines: 49
Nf-ID: #R:cornell:-77500:ISM780:37400010:000:2506
Nf-From: ISM780!jim    Nov 28 15:42:00 1985


>I have heard that the word Yankee comes from a time when there was a great
>influx of Dutch (?) settlers to the US, and that the typical Dutch (?) name
>of the period was "Jan Guy" or something similar, which was corrupted to
>Yankee. I notice that people keep spelling it Yanqui, so I was wondering
>what the derivation really was.

As with most of the subjects discussed on this net, there are better sources
of information than hearsay.  I know this is a radical thought for a bunch of
libertarian/techie prima donnas who think that if they can't figure it out
from their own current knowledge then it isn't true, but I really think that
examination of the written knowledge database is a rather important way of
acquiring or validating knowledge or at least increasing the reliability
factor for your beliefs and suspicions.  I find it rather sad that there
are all these techno-sophisticates that never even learned to use a
dictionary and do not own a good encyclopedia.  Now the following is not
*guaranteed* truth (there is no such thing in the empirical realm), but it
does have a lot more reliability than any number of "yeah, I heard that
too"'s or "well the way I heard it was ...".  You may accuse me of
moralizing, but that *reaction* won't affect the *reality*.  If your process
of acquiring and validating information is corrupt, then *all* of your
conclusions are untrustworthy.  If so many people can share and to some
degree accept false info about "Green Grow" (not to mention the linguistic
naivety that requires), just think what it says about political "fact" that
people have a vested interest in believing and promoting independent of its
truth.

From Webster's New World Dictionary, Second College Edition, The World
Publishing Company, 1970 (yeah, I should get a new one):

        Yankee [< ? Du. Jan Kees (taken as pl.) < Jan, John and Kees, dial.
          form of kaas, cheese; orig. (Jan Kaas) used as a disparaging
          nickname for a Hollander, later for Dutch freebooter; applied by
          colonial Dutch in New York to English settlers in Connecticut: cf.
          H. L. Mencken, Am. Lang. Suppl. I, pp. 192-197]

	  1) a native or inhabitant of New England. 2) a) a native or
	  inhabitant of a Northern State; Northerner b) a Union soldier in
	  the Civil War 3) a native or inhabitant of the U.S.

and
	Yanqui
	  Sp. American respelling of Yankee (sense 3)

and

	Yank [Slang] a Yankee; esp., a U.S. soldier in World Wars I and II.

-- Jim Balter (ima!jim)