[FN] Known also as "Martin Garretson's bay." Garretson was Schout (Sheriff), hence "Schout's bay." The neck of land "called by the Indians Sint-Sink," was fenced for the pasturage of cows, and became known as "Cow Neck," hence "Cow bay" and "Cow harbor," now Manhasset bay. (See Matinnec'ock and Mochgonneck-onck.)
[Manhasset,] correctly Manhanset, means, "Near the Island," or something less than at the island. The locative was long known as "Head of Cow Neck."
[Matinnecock] is noted in a survey for Lewis Morris, in 1685: "A tract of land lying upon the north side of Long Island, within the township of Oyster Bay, in Queens County, and known by the name of Matinicock," and in another survey: "A certain small neck of land at a place called Mattinicock." Extended also to an island and to an Indian clan. Cornelius van Tienhoven wrote in 1650: "Martin Garritson's Bay, or Martinnehouck, [FN-1] is much deeper and wider than Oyster Bay; it runs westward in and divides into three rivers, two of which are navigable. The smallest stream runs up in front of the Indian village called Martinnehouck, where they have their plantations. The tribe is not strong, and consists of about thirty families. In and about this bay were formerly great numbers of Indian plantations which now lie waste. On the rivers are numerous valleys of sweet and salt meadows." The name has, with probable correctness, been interpreted from Metanak-ok (Lenape, Metanak-onk; Abn., Metanak-ook), meaning, "Along the edge of the island," or, as Van Tienhoven wrote, "About this bay." The same name appears on the Delaware as that of what is now known as Burlington Island. [FN-2] It is corrupted in New Jersey to Tinnicum, and is preserved on Long Island as the name of a village in the town of Oyster Bay.
[FN-1] A corruption from "Martin."
[FN-2] Mattinacunk, Matinneconke, Matinnekonck—"having been formerly known by the name of Kipp's Island, and by ye Indian name of Koo-menakanok-onck." (Col. Hist. N. Y.) Koo-menakanok-onck was the largest of two islands in the Delaware and was particularly identified by the Indian name, which means "Pine-tree-islands place." The name by which the Island came to be known was transferred to it apparently.
[Hog's Island,] so called by the early settlers, now known as Center Island, has the record description: "A piece of land on Martin Garretson's Bay, in the Indian tongue called Matinnecong, alias Hog's Neck, or Hog's Island, being an island at high tide." (Col. Hist. N. Y., xiv, 435.) "Matinneckock, a neck on the Sound east of Muchito Cove." (See Muchito.) The island is connected with the main land by a neck or beach which was overflowed at high tide.
[Caumsett] is recorded as the name of "The neck of land which makes the west side of Cow Harbor and the east side of Oyster Bay" (Ind. Deed of 1654), known later as Horse Neck and Loyd's Neck. Apparently a corruption of Ketumpset, "Near the great standing rock." The reference may have been to what was known as Bluff Point.
[Muchito,] the name of what is now Glen Cove, near Hempstead Harbor, is otherwise written Muschedo, Mosquito and Muscota. It was primarily written as the name of Muchito Neck. It means "Meadow"—Moskehtu (Eliot), "grass;" Muskuta, "A grassy plain or meadow." (See Muscota.)
[Katawomoke,] "or, as called by the English, Huntington," is written in the Indian deed of 1653, Ketauomoke; in deed of 1646, Ketauomocke, and assigned to a neck of land "Bounded upon the west side with a river commonly called by the Indians Nachaquetuck, and on the east by a river called Opcutkontycke," the latter now known as Northfield-Harbor Brook. The name is preserved in several orthographies. In deed to Lion Gardiner (1638), Ar-hata-amunt; in deed to Richard Smith (1664), Catawaunuck and Catawamuck, and in another entry "Cattawamnuck land," i. e. land about Catawamuck; in Huntington Records, Ketewomoke; in Cal. N. Y. Land Papers, p. 60: "To the eastward of the town of Huntington and to the westward of Nesaquack, commonly called by the Indians Katawamake and in English by the name of Crope Meadow;" in another entry, "Crab Meadow," by which last name the particular tract was known for many years. "Crope" and "Crab" are English equivalents for a species of grass called "finger-grass or wire-grass," and were obviously employed by the English to describe the kind of grass that distinguished the meadow—certainly not as an equivalent of the Indian name, which was clearly that of a place at or near the head of Huntington Harbor, from which it was extended to the lands as a general locative. The several forms of the name may probably be correctly read from Kehti, or its equivalent. Kehchi, "Chief, principal, greatest," and -amaug, "Fishing-place" (-amuck, L. I.), literally "The greatest fishing-place." The orthography of 1638 is especially corrupt, and Ketawamuck, apparently the most nearly correct, the rule holding good in this, as in other cases, that the very early forms are especially imperfect.