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Yankee

The term Yankee and its contracted form Yank have several interrelated meanings, all referring to people from the United States. Their various meanings depend on the context, and may refer to New Englanders, the Northeastern United States, the Northern United States, or to people from the US in general.[2][3][4]

"Yank" and "Yankees" redirect here. For other uses, see Yank (disambiguation). For the baseball team, see New York Yankees.

Outside the United States, Yank is used informally to refer to an American person or thing. It has been especially popular in the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand where it may be used variously, either with an uncomplimentary overtone, endearingly, or cordially.[5][6] In the Southern United States, Yankee is a derisive term which refers to all Northerners, and during the American Civil War it was applied by Confederates to soldiers of the Union army in general. Elsewhere in the United States, it largely refers to people from the Northeastern states, but especially those with New England cultural ties, such as descendants of colonial New England settlers, wherever they live.[7] Its sense is sometimes more cultural than geographical, emphasizing the Calvinist Puritan Christian beliefs and traditions of the Congregationalists who brought their culture when they settled outside New England. The speech dialect of Eastern New England English is called "Yankee" or "Yankee dialect".[8]

Contemporary uses[edit]

In the United States[edit]

The term Yankee can have many different meanings within the United States that are contextually and geographically dependent. Traditionally, Yankee was most often used to refer to a New Englander descended from the settlers of the region, thus often suggesting Puritanism and thrifty values.[40] By the mid-20th century, some speakers applied the word to any American inhabiting the area north of the Mason–Dixon Line, though usually with a specific focus still on New England. New England Yankee might be used to differentiate.[41] However, within New England itself, the term still refers more specifically to old-stock New Englanders of English descent. For example:

Beals, Carleton; Our Yankee Heritage: New England's Contribution to American Civilization

(1955) online

Conforti, Joseph A. Imagining New England: Explorations of Regional Identity from the Pilgrims to the Mid-Twentieth Century

(2001) online

Bushman, Richard L. From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690–1765 (1967)

Daniels, Bruce C. New England Nation: The Country the Puritans Built (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) 237 pp.

excerpt and text search

Ellis, David M. "The Yankee Invasion of New York 1783–1850". New York History (1951) 32:1–17.

. Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989), Yankees comprise one of the four

Fischer, David Hackett

Gjerde; Jon. The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830–1917

(1999) online

Gray; Susan E. The Yankee West: Community Life on the Michigan Frontier

(1996) online

Handlin, Oscar. "Yankees", in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, ed. by Stephan Thernstrom, (1980) pp 1028–1030.

Hill, Ralph Nading. Yankee Kingdom: Vermont and New Hampshire.

(1960).

Holbrook, Stewart H. Yankee Exodus: An Account of Migration from New England (1950)

Holbrook, Stewart H.; Yankee Loggers: A Recollection of Woodsmen, Cooks, and River Drivers (1961)

Hudson, John C. "Yankeeland in the Middle West", 85 (Sept 1986)

Journal of Geography

Jensen, Richard. "Yankees" in Encyclopedia of Chicago (2005).

Kleppner; Paul. The Third Electoral System 1853–1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures University of North Carolina Press. 1979, on Yankee voting behavior

Knights, Peter R.; Yankee Destinies: The Lives of Ordinary Nineteenth-Century Bostonians

(1991) online

Mathews, Lois K. The Expansion of New England (1909).

Piersen, William Dillon. Black Yankees: The Development of an Afro-American Subculture in Eighteenth-Century New England (1988)

Power, Richard Lyle. Planting Corn Belt Culture (1953), on Indiana

Rose, Gregory. "Yankees/Yorkers", in Richard Sisson ed, The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia (2006) 193–95, 714–5, 1094, 1194,

Sedgwick, Ellery; The Atlantic Monthly, 1857–1909: Yankee Humanism at High Tide and Ebb

(1994) online

Smith, Bradford. Yankees in Paradise: The New England Impact on Hawaii (1956)

Taylor, William R. Cavalier and Yankee: The Old South and American National Character (1979)

WPA. Massachusetts: A Guide to Its Places and People. Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration of Massachusetts (1937).

Online Etymology Dictionary

Archived 2017-12-06 at the Wayback Machine

Wordorigins.org