Kingston NY Derivation of Place Names

Derivation of
Place Names

Derivation of Place Names

Esopus

The name Esopus is first recorded on a map dating to 1616 as the name of a location on the east shore of the Hudson River, in present-day Dutchess County. The name probably became fixed on the west side, at the mouth of the Rondout Creek, by about the early 1620s. A thorough, documented discussion of these earliest references to Esopus is presented in Chapter 1, The Early History of Kingston.

Wildwyck or Wiltwyck

In the early days, the Esopus settlement had no local government of its own. Civil or criminal cases were brought to the court of Fort Orange and Beverwyck (present-day Albany). In May of 1661, Director-General Peter Stuyvesant established a local court at Esopus, and it was at this time that he gave the name Wildwyck to the settlement.

Wildwyck comes from the the Dutch words wild (pronounced vilt), meaning wild, savage, or indian (as either an adjective or noun), and wyck (pronounced vaik), meaning a quarter, ward, or district, or a retreat or refuge. The combined Wildwyck may thus be interpreted in any number of different ways. The accepted anglicized pronunciation for the name Wiltwick.

Rondout

The name of the Rondout Creek comes from the fort, or redoubt, that was erected near its mouth late in 1660. The name was not applied until some years after the latter date. The contention that this or some other redoubt was built there as early as 1614 is not tenable; a full investigation of that question is presented in Chapter 1, The Early History of Kingston. The Dutch equivalent of the English word redoubt (meaning a fort or stronghold), is reduyt.

In the Dutch records of Wildwyck, however, the spelling used to designate this same fort is invariably Ronduyt during the earliest period, with the present form rondout (often capitalized) appearing as early as November 22, 1666. Because the spelling of the word was unusual and implied a proper name, the translators, Oppenheim and Versteeg, preserved the original form in their translations instead of giving the English equivalent, as O´Callaghan and Fernow had done.

The Dutch word ronduyt is an adjective meaning "frankly" or "positively." The word could also be broken down into its components and translated, literally, "round-out." However, it seems unlikely that the inhabitants of Esopus had any special meaning in mind when they corrupted the Dutch word reduyt into ronduyt and rondout. Most likely, this corrupting process merely represented the simplification of a word (reduyt).

The Strand

(original pronunciation, in Dutch: "strunt"). Strand means, in Dutch, a shore or beach. The street running along the north shore of the Rondout Creek near its mouth has always been called "The Strand," or, more recently, "Strand Street" (East and West).

Kingston.

In 1664 New Netherland passed from Dutch to English control and was given the name of New York. The settlement of Esopus or Wildwyck has borne the name of Kingston since September, 1669, except for a brief time during the second period of Dutch rule in the province, 1673-74, when the name of the settlement was changed temporarily to Swaenenburgh.

Fried, Marc B. The Early History of Kingston and Ulster County, N.Y. Kingston, NY: Ulster County Historical Society, 1975