What is the origin of the word “Yankee”?
From The Straight Dope, 11-Jul-1986 Dear Cecil: What is the origin of the word “Yankee”? –Listener, WFBR, Baltimore Cecil replies: What’s so complicated? You got your yankers, obviously you also got your yankees. However, I can’t claim the etymological authorities are exactly lining up to embrace this notion. The origins of “Yankee” have been fiercely debated throughout the history of the Republic, and to this day the Oxford English Dictionary says the source of the word is “unascertained.” Perhaps the most widely accepted explanation was advanced by H.L. Mencken, the well-known newsman-scholar (and don’t tell me that isn’t an unusual combination), who argued that Yankee derives from the expression Jan Kaas, literally “John Cheese.” This supposedly was a derogatory nickname bestowed on the Dutch by the Germans and the Flemish in the 1600s. (Wisconsin cheeseheads can undoubtedly relate.) The English later applied the term to Dutch pirates, and later still Dutch settlers in New York app
