[FN] Manchonacke is the orthography in patent to Lion Gardiner, 1639. (Doc. Hist. N. Y., i, 685.) Dr. Trumbull quotes Manchonat, Narragansett.
[Manah-ackaquasu-wanock,] given as the name of Shelter Island, is a composition of two names, as shown by the record entry, "All that their island of Ahaquasu-wamuck, otherwise called Manhansack." Ahaquasu-wamuck is no doubt the equivalent of Aúhaquassu (Nar.), "Sheltered," and -amuck is an equivalent of amaug, "Fishing-place," literally, "Sheltered fishing-place." Menhansack is Manhansick in deed of 1652, and Munhassett and Manhasett in prior deed of 1640. (East-Hampton Records.) It is a composition from Munnohan, "Island;" es, "small," and et, "at" and describes a small island as "at" or "near" some other island. The compound Manah-ahaquasu-wanock, means, therefore, simply, "Sheltered-fishing-place island," identifying the island by the fishing-place, while Manhasett identifies it in generic terms as a small island near some other island or place. [FN] The island now bears the generic terms Manhasett. Pogatacutt, sachem of the island, is supposed to have lived on what is now known as "Sachem's Neck." (See Montauk.)
[FN] Perhaps explained by the entry, "Roberts' Island, situate near Manhansack." (Records, Town of East-Hampton.)
[Manises,] or Menasses, as written by Dr. Trumbull, the name of Block Island, means, literally, "Small island," just as an Englishman would describe it. The Narragansetts were its owners. Its earliest European occupant was Capt. Adriaen Block, who, having lost his vessel by burning at Manhattan, constructed here another which he called the "Onrust" or "Restless," in 1614. It was the first vessel constructed by Europeans in New York waters. In this vessel Block made extended surveys of Hudson's River, the Connecticut, the Sound, etc. Acquiring from his residence among them a knowledge of the Connecticut coast dialects, he wrote the names of tribes on the Hudson in that dialect. Reference is made to what is better known as the "Carte Figurative of 1614-16." There is no better evidence that this Figurative was from Block's chart than its presumed date and the orthographies of the names written on it.
Hudson's River on the West.
[Neversink,] now so written as the name of the hills on the south side of the lower or Raritan Bay, is written Neuversin by Van der Donck, Neyswesinck by Van Tienhoven, Newasons by Ogilby, 1671, and more generally in early records Naver, Neuver, Newe, and Naoshink. The original was no doubt the Lenape Newas-ink, "At the point, comer, or promontory." The root Ne (English Nâï), means, "To come to a point," "To form a point," or, as rendered by Dr. Trumbull, "A corner, angle or point," Nâïag. Dr. Schoolcraft's translation, "Between waters," and Dr. O'Callaghan's "A stream between hills," are incorrect, as can be abundantly proved. (See Nyack.)
[Perth Amboy,] at the mouth of Raritan River, is in part, from James, Earl of Perth, Lord High Chancellor of Scotland, who founded a settlement there, and part from Amboy (English Ambo), meaning any rising or stage, a hill or any elevation. A writer in 1684 notes: "Where the town of Perth is now building is on a shelf of land rising twenty, thirty and forty feet." Smith (Hist. of New Jersey) wrote: "Ambo, in Indian, 'A point;'" but there is no such word as Ambo, meaning "A point," in any Indian dialect. Heckewelder's interpretation: "Ompoge, from which Amboy is derived, and also Emboli, means 'A bottle,' or a place resembling a bottle," is equally erroneous, although Emboli may easily have been an Indian pronunciation of Amboy. The Indian deed of 1651 reads, "From the Raritan Point, called Ompoge," which may be read from Ompaé, Alg. generic, "Standing or upright," of which Amboy, English, is a fair interpretation.
[Raritangs] (Van Tienhoven), Rariton (Van der Donck), Raretans, Raritanoos, Nanakans, etc., a stream flowing to tide-water west of Staten Island, extended to the Indian sub-tribal organization which occupied the Raritan Valley, is from the radical Nâï, "A point," as in Naragan, Naraticon, Narrangansett, Nanakan, Nahican, etc., fairly traced by Dr. Trumbull in an analysis of Narragansett, and apparently conclusively established in Nanakan and Narratschoen on the Hudson, the Verdrietig Hoek, or "Tedious Point," of Dutch notation, where, after several forms it culminates in Navish. Lindstrom's Naratic-on, on the lower Delaware, was probably Cape May, and an equivalent substantially of the New England Nayantukq-ut, "A point on a tidal river," and Raritan was the point of the peninsula which the clan occupied terminating on Raritan Bay, where, probably, the name was first met by Dutch navigators. The dialectic exchange of N and R, and of the surd mutes k and t are clear in comparing Nanakan on the Hudson, Naratic-on on the Delaware, and Raritan on the Raritan. Van der Donck's map locates the clan bearing the name in four villages at and above the junction of a branch of the stream at New Brunswick, N. J., where there is a certain point as well as on Raritan Bay. The clan was conspicuous in the early days of Dutch New Netherland. Van Tienhoven wrote that it had been compelled to remove further inland on account of freshets, but mainly from its inability to resist the raids of the southern Indians; that the lands which they left unoccupied was between "two high mountains far distant from one to the other;" that it was "the handsomest and pleasantest country that man can behold." The great southern trunk-line Indian path led through this valley, and was then, as it is now, the great route of travel between the northern and the southern coast. (See Nanakan, Nyack-on-the-Hudson, and Orange.)