ABSTRACT
Whenever I am in The Netherlands—which is very often—I am reminded that the word “Yankee” comes from the Dutch expression, “Jan Kees,” a slang idiom that refers to a country bumpkin. My Dutch colleagues swear that it was used in mocking reference to the unsophisticated English farmers by those old patroons who bought the island of Manhattan and established Nieuw Amsterdam and a number of settlements along the Hudson River.
