Yankee
From Free net encyclopedia
- For other uses, see Yankee (disambiguation).
The term Yankee has a variety of meanings. Generally, it refers to citizens of the United States, particularly northerners, especially those Americans from the Northeastern United States whose ancestors arrived before 1776. Many Yankees migrated from New England and settled the northern parts of New York and the Midwest, as well as the Pacific Coast from San Francisco to Seattle.
Contents |
History
Origins
The origins of the term are disputed. One theory claims that it originated in the 1760s from an English rendering of the Dutch Jan Kees ("John Cheese"), a nickname used by Dutch settlers in upstate New York referring to the New Englanders who were migrating to their region. (see Martin Van Buren) The first recorded use of the term by an Englishman to refer to Americans appears in the 1780s, in a letter by Lord Horatio Nelson.
There are several other folk and humorous etymologies for the word.
One influence on the use of the term throughout the years has been the song Yankee Doodle, which was popular at the time of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). Though the British intended to insult the colonials with the song, following the Battle of Concord, it was adopted by Americans as a proud retort and today is the 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 column in a newspaper in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1835. The character was a plain-talking American who served to poke fun at American and Nova Scotian customs of that era, while trying to urge the Canadians to be as clever and hard-working as the Yankees.
During the American Civil War (1861 - 1865) southern soldiers used it as a derogatory term for their Northern enemies--including even Irish Americans. The term also referred to the border states and even African American troops who fought for the Union. As an ethnic group the Yankees dispersed throughout New England, upstate New York, the northern Midwest, and the Pacific Northwest--and even Hawaii. They brought along their religion (Congregational, but also Methodist and Northern Baptist), their politics (Republican), their drive for education, their complex social structure that emphasized brainpower over manual skills, and favored intricate rule-based organizations, like corporations. They tended to dominate business, finance, philanthropy and higher education, but were much less successful in politics, where the Irish Americans seemed to have the advantage. The Yankees, who dominated New England, much of upstate New York, and much of the upper Midwest were the strongest supporters of the new Republican party in the 1860s. This was especially true for the Congregationalists and Presbyterians among them and (during the war), the Methodists. A study of 65 predominantly Yankee counties showed they voted only 40% for the Whigs in 1848 and 1852, but became 61-65% Republican in presidential elections of 1856 through 1864. [Kleppner p 55]
Yankees originally lived in villages (avoiding spread-out farms), fostered local democracy through town meetings, and emphasized puritanical morality. They left agriculture as soon as possible for careers in the city. Many were characterized by introspection of the sort that produces diaries.
Contemporary uses
In the United States
Within the United States, the term Yankee can have a number of different contextually and geographically dependent meanings.
Today Yankee is most often used to refer to a New Englander (in which case it may denote New England puritan and thrifty values) or someone from one of the Mid-Atlantic states. However, within New England, the term is often understood to refer more specifically to old-stock New Englanders of English descent. The term WASP, in use since the 1960s, is often derogatory. The term "Swamp Yankee" is used in rural Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut to refer to Protestant farmers of moderate means and their descendants (as opposed to upper-class Yankees). The old Yankee twang survives mainly in the hill towns of interior New England. The most characteristic Yankee food was the pie; Yankee author Harriet Beecher Stowe in her novel Oldtown Folks celebrated the social traditions surrounding the Yankee pie.
In the American South the term is still used as a derisive term for northerners, even those who migrate to the South. From 1860 to the 1920s a favored term was "damn Yankee".
A humorous aphorism attributed to E.B. White summarizes these distinctions:
- To foreigners, a Yankee is an American.
- To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner.
- To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander.
- To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter.
- And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast.
Since the beginning of the 20th Century, the term has also been used by Americans to refer to the New York Yankees baseball team, or the fans of that team.
In other parts of the world
In the late 19th century the Japanese were called "the Yankees of the East" in praise of their industriousness and drive to modernization. Outside the United States, especially in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, Yankee, often shortened to 'Yank', is used as a colloquial term for American. In Cockney rhyming slang, Yank became septic tank begetting the new nickname Seppo for an American. The term was used extensively in these countries during the world wars to refer to American soldiers. "Working for the Yankee dollar" is sometimes heard as a derogatory phrase for someone who is perceived to have 'sold out' to an American corporation in some way. In some parts of the world, particularly in Latin America and East Asia, yankee or yanqui is meant as an insult and is politically associated with anti-Americanism and used in expressions such as "Yankee go home" or "we struggle against the yanqui, enemy of humanity" (words from the Sandinista anthem). Yanquilandia ("Yankeeland") is a Spanish-language derogative nickname for the United States. In Japan the term yankī is used to refer to a youth subculture of bleached blondes who are generally regarded as delinquents by older generations; general slang for American is amekō.
References
- Conforti, Joseph A. Imagining New England: Explorations of Regional Identity from the Pilgrims to the Mid-Twentieth Century (2001)
- Bushman, Richard L. From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 (1967)
- Ellis, David M. "The Yankee Invasion of New York 1783— 1850". New York History (1951) 32:1—17.
- Fischer, David Hackett. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989), Yankees comprise one of the four
- Gjerde; Jon. The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830-1917 (1999)
- Gray; Susan E. The Yankee West: Community Life on the Michigan Frontier (1996)
- Holbrook, Stewart H. Yankee Exodus: An Account of Migration from New England (1950)
- Jensen, Richard. "Yankees" in Encyclopedia of Chicago (2005).
- Kleppner; Paul. The Third Electoral System 1853-1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures University of North Carolina Press. 1979, on Yankee voting behavior
- Kretzschmar, William A. Handbook of the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States (1994)
- Lemay, J. A. Leo "The American Origins of Yankee Doodle," William and Mary Quarterly 33 (Jan 1976) 435-64
- Mathews, Lois K. The Expansion of New England (1909).
- Taylor, William R. Cavalier and Yankee: The Old South and American National Character (1979)
External links
de:Yankee es:Yanqui fr:Yankee it:Yankee ja:ヤンキー ko:양키 nl:Yankee (scheldwoord) pl:jankes ru:Янки sv:Jänkare