[Ads-l] Yankee

[victor steinbok]

As has become customary in my searches I was looking for something else,
got sidetracked and stumbled on "Yankee". A quick OED check had a 1697
pointer to Dampier's New Voyage Around The World. The OED citation is from
page 38. The margin note identifies the timeline as 1681.

Looking over the rest of the citations in OED etymology for Yankee, all the
ones preceding Dampier's identify either "Captain Yanky" (with variant
spellings) or "Pirate Yanky". One reference, which I have not checked
identifies "Captain John Williams (Yankey)".

So all the references appear to be to the same person, with Dampier's
dating being the earliest (although published later). There are three
factors that appear important to me.

First, the odd reference to "John Williams (Yankey)" (1687, published
1899). There can be no doubt it's the same person, despite the Anglicized
name. The second name that appears in the same citation is Captain Jacob
Everson (Jacob). The subsequent citation in an English document refers to
"the pirates Yanky and Jacobs" - again, undoubtedly the same two people.

Second, the earliest available reference (1683 via 1898 publication)
identifies pirates "Vanhorn and ... Yankey Duch". Instead of speculating,
I'm just going to posit that this means "Yankee the Dutchman", supporting
the part of the etymology note that ties "Yankee" to Dutch "Janke". More on
that in a moment.

Third, page 38 is not the earliest that Captain Yanky appears in Dampier's
account. Rather than look in the English 1697 (or subsequent) edition, I
took a peek at the 1698 French edition. The name appears much earlier in
that text - the accounting of man power and artillery of the ships sailing
out (p. 33). Going back to the English edition (p. 26 in Internet Archives
version; p. 29 in one Google Books version), the same account appears as
follows:

"Capt. Williams, a small Barcolongo ) Capt. Yankes, a Barco-longo 4 Guns
about 6o or so Men, English, Dutch, and French; himself a Dutchman."

Captain Williams is only mentioned once, subsequently, but there are also
several mentions of Captain Tristian, who is not listed in this account of
the privateer fleet. Subsequent text also reveals that "Captain Yanky" is
not commissioned as a privateer, so is, technically, a pirate.

So, here's the issue. If Yankey/Yanky is indeed the nickname of Captain
John Williams and he is indeed Dutch, his original Dutch name may well be
Janke (presumably, a familiar/diminutive of Ian/John). Dampier also conveys
further that Captain Yankey was not only liked and supported by his crew
but by crew on other ships in the fleet as well, to the point of opposition
to the commissioned Captain Wright.

The OED etymology note reads:

"The existence of Yank(e)y, Yankee, as a surname or nickname (often with
Dutch associations) is vouched for by the following references:"

There are two problems with this, as I see it. First, all the references
refer to the same person, a privateer or a pirate captain, so this is not
really multiple confirmations of such a surname. Second, it's not actually
a surname but, rather, an endearing shortening of the first name. There's
also the additional evidence of multiple spellings of the name - Yankey,
Yanky, Yanks and Yanke (not to mention, Janke) - that makes the search
somewhat complicated. But, it would go a long way in confirming the Dutch
origin of the Yankee epithet and possibly even linking it to the
aforementioned captain.

Following up on this reasearch is out of my league. I have neither the
skill nor the resources. But, if this Captain John Yanky Williams can be
traced, it may just be the lead to unravel the whole mystery.

VS-)

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