New York's Name and the Duke Who Took It From the Dutch

When the English took New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, the city and the whole province got a new name in honor of James, Duke of York. Before that, for about half a century, the place had been New Netherland.

A brother’s gift

John Romeyn Brodhead, who wrote a big history of the state in 1853, tells how it started. In March 1664, King Charles II “sealed a patent granting to the Duke of York and Albany a large territory in America.” The duke was “the king’s brother, James.” The grant took in Long Island and everything from the west side of the Connecticut River to the east side of Delaware Bay.

There was one problem. The Dutch already had a colony there. Brodhead says the grant “included the whole of New Netherland,” and he doesn’t sugarcoat the plan behind it: England “determined boldly to rob Holland of her American province.”

The surrender

English ships came that summer, under Colonel Richard Nicolls. On Monday morning, September 8, Brodhead writes, Governor Peter Stuyvesant “marched out of Fort Amsterdam with all the honors of war” and led his soldiers down to the water to board ships for Holland.

The renaming started right away. The fort’s name “was immediately changed to ‘Fort James.’” Nicolls was proclaimed deputy governor for the Duke of York, and “in compliment to whom he directed that the city of New Amsterdam should thenceforth be known as ‘New York.’” Upriver, Fort Orange became “Fort Albany,” Brodhead says, “after the second title of the Duke of York.”

“To comprehend all the titles”

The province got the same treatment. “All that could be further done was to change its name,” Brodhead says, “and, to glorify one of the most bigoted princes in English history, the royal province was ordered to be called ‘New York.’”

That’s a strong line from a New York historian about the man his state is named for. The duke went on to be King James II, as Henry Gannett’s 1905 list of U.S. place names notes in another entry, and you can tell Brodhead wasn’t a fan.

Nicolls didn’t stop there. He called the land west of the Hudson “Albania” and Long Island “Yorkshire,” so as “to comprehend all the titles” of the Duke of York. “Albania” had a problem, though. The duke had already given that land away as New Jersey, and Nicolls didn’t know it.

One name, two places

Gannett’s main entry keeps it short. New York, the state “and county in same State,” was “named for the Duke of York, the original grantee.” So if you’ve ever wondered who the “York” in New York was, it was a royal duke who got the province as a gift from his brother.

Sources & further reading

• John Romeyn Brodhead, History of the State of New York, vol. 1 (New York, 1853), pp. 735–745. “The king’s brother, James, Duke of York”; England “now determined boldly to rob Holland of her American province”; in March 1664 the king “sealed a patent granting to the Duke of York and Albany a large territory in America, comprehending Long Island,” and the lands “from the west side of the Connecticut River to the east side of Delaware Bay”; “This sweeping grant included the whole of New Netherland” (p. 735). The squadron with Nicolls on board, July and August (pp. 737–738). On September 8, Stuyvesant “marched out of Fort Amsterdam with all the honors of war” (p. 742). Fort Amsterdam, “the name of which was immediately changed to ‘Fort James’”; Nicolls proclaimed “deputy governor for the Duke of York; in compliment to whom he directed that the city of New Amsterdam should thenceforth be known as ‘New York’” (p. 743). The name of Fort Orange “changed to that of ‘Fort Albany,’ after the second title of the Duke of York” (p. 744). “All that could be further done was to change its name; and, to glorify one of the most bigoted princes in English history, the royal province was ordered to be called ‘New York’”; “Albania” for the region west of the Hudson and “Yorkshire” for Long Island, “so as ‘to comprehend all the titles’ of the Duke of York”; “where, for half a century, that of Holland had rightfully waved” (p. 745).
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), pp. 109, 224. Dukes County, Massachusetts, under the government “of the Duke of York, afterwards James II” (p. 109). “New York; State of the Union, and county in same State, named for the Duke of York, the original grantee” (p. 224).
• U.S. Census Bureau, state codes (2020). Lists New York’s permanent federal place-name record number (GNIS 1779796).