Before New York was New York, it was a Dutch colony called New Amsterdam. This heritage left a deep impact on New York’s language and culture, and many place names in New York come from anglicized versions of the original Dutch nomenclature.

In Dutch, for example, a “bowerie” was a farm. Peter Stuyvesant, one of the original governors of the colony, had a large farm that encompassed much of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The region was called “Stuyvesant’s bowerie” or simply “the bowerie.” Today, “The Bowery” is the name still used for both the region and the main street that runs through it.

Rivers in New York often maintain their original Dutch name. “Kil” was the Dutch word for river; the name “Fresh Kills”—which now refers to an area used for a landfill on Staten Island—originally referred to the area’s freshwater streams. The Dutch also named the Schuylkill River, the Arthur Kill (in New Jersey), the English Kills River (in Queens), and the Kill Van Kull Channel (between Staten Island and New Jersey).

Brooklyn was named by the Dutch, who called it “Breuck–Landt,” or broken land, because many small ponds broke up the marshy landscape. The Dutch were also particularly fond of rabbit stew, and named the southernmost section of Brooklyn “Konijn Eiland,” or Rabbit Island, for the good hunting that was found there. The rabbits are long gone but the name stuck; over the years konijn was transliterated to coney, giving us the present–day name Coney Island.