joke placename "etymologies"

[George Thompson]

A letter headed "AUTHENTICATED ETYMOLOGIES" and signed "A PUNSTER" in the [New-York] Commercial Advertiser of April 24, 1801 (p. 3, col. 2) offers the following (summarized):
America: Columbus's crew became jubilant at seeing land, and he remarked "the lads are in a merry key"
Massachusetts: a black man is asked to give the state a name; he defers, saying "Massa chuse (sic) it"
Albany: Scotch settles call the site "all bonny"
Fort Ticonderoga: from "tie on the rogue", referring to military floggings
Canada: from "can a day", referring to the allotment of spruce beer allowed the first settlers.

The last three are far too strained to have caught on, but I recall hearing this derivation of Massachusetts from a classmate in grade school, and I doubt that his family subscribed to the Commercial.  Has anyone else encountered it or the "merry key" story?  Were they perhaps old in 1801?

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.