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Yankee

For other uses, see Yankee (disambiguation).

The term Yankee refers to citizens of the United States, particularly northerners, especially those Americans from the Northeastern United States whose ancestors arrived from Britain before 1700.


Contents

History

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.

Ethnocultural group

As an ethnocultural group, large numbers of 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 after 1880 were much less successful in politics, where the Irish Americans were more successful.

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 (after 1860), 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. [1]

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. They created high schools and colleges and sent their children, building human capital that was highly rewarding in growing cities. Many were characterized by introspection of the sort that produces diaries. Calvin Coolidge was a striking example of the Yankee type. He moved from rural Vermont to urban Massachusetts, and was well educated at 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.[2]

Contemporary uses

In the United States

Within the United States, the term Yankee can have many different contextually and geographically dependent meanings.

Traditionally Yankee was most often used to refer to a New Englander (in which case it may denote New England puritan and thrifty values), but today refers to anyone coming from a state north of the Mason-Dixon line, with a specific focus still on New England. However, within New England itself, 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 comparable. The term "Swamp Yankee" is used in rural Rhode Island, eastern Connecticut, and southeastern Massachusetts 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.[3] 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, especially those who migrate to the South. From 1860 to the 1920s a favored term was "damnyankee" (spelled as one word). Another southern usage is yankee dime which means a kiss. Southerners, by and large, do not care to be referred to as "yank" or "yankee" when traveling abroad.

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.

There are several other folk and humorous etymologies for the word.

Since the beginning of the 20th Century, the term has also been used by Americans to refer to the New York Yankees baseball 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 Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, Yankee, often shortened to 'Yank', is used as a colloquial, often derogatory, 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. Septic tank is also shortened to just septic as another slang term.

"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, Spain 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. In Finland, the word jenkki (yank) is commonly used just to refer to any American person, and Jenkkilä (yankeeland) refers to United States itself.

Origins of word in English

The origins of the term are uncertain. It was used in a different sense in England by 1683. In 1758 British General James Wolfe referred to the New England soldiers under his command as Yankees: "I can afford you two companies of Yankees." The term as used by Brits was thick with contempt, as shown by the cartoon from 1775 ridiculing Yankee soldiers.[4] The "Yankee and Pennamite" war was a series of clashes over land titles in Pennsylvania, 1769ff, in which "Yankee" meant the Connecticut claimants.

Linguists have rejected numerous theories that the word derived from an Indian word. [5]Many people from the Netherlands moved to the US and New Amsterdam which now is New York. Very popular Dutch names are Jan and Kees. You pronounce these names as "yan" (a as in "done") and "kase". Put these popular names together and you get yankeese which pronounces the same as yankee.; or it was a term used by Dutch settlers in upstate New York referring to the New Englanders who were migrating to their region. [6]

Yankee:Loyalist newspaper cartoon from Boston 1776 ridicules "Yankie Doodles" militia who have encircled the city
Enlarge
Loyalist newspaper cartoon from Boston 1776 ridicules "Yankie Doodles" militia who have encircled the city

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, Canada, 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 old-fashioned Canadians to be as clever and hard-working as the Yankees.

During the American Civil War (1861 - 1865) Confederates used it as a derogatory term for their Northern enemies - "Damn Yankees". The "damned Yankee" usage dates from 1812.[7]

References

Linguistic

  1. ^ Kleppner p 55
  2. ^ William Allen White, A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge (1938) p. 122.
  3. ^ Fisher, Albion's Seed p 62; Edward Eggleston, The Transit of Civilization from England to America in the Seventeenth Century. (1901) p. 110; Fleser (1962)
  4. ^ Mathews (1951) 1896
  5. ^ Mathews (1951) 1896
  6. ^ Or as Michael Quinion and Patrick Hanks argue [1]) to the Dutch nickname and surname Janke, anglicized to Yanke and "used as a nickname for a Dutch-speaking American in colonial times".
  7. ^ Mathews (1951) 1896

See Also

Yankee DoodleYankee Doodle Dandy

Categories


American culture | Dutch loanwords | Ethnic groups in the United States | Social classes

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