[Espating] (Hespating, Staten Island deed) is claimed to have been the Indian name of what is now known as Union Hill, in Jersey City, where, it is presumed, there was an Indian village. The name is from the root Ashp (Usp, Mass.; Esp, Lenape; Ishp, Chip.), "High," and -ink, locative, "At or on a high place." From the same root Ishpat-ink, Hespating. (O'Callaghan.) See Ashpetong.
[Siskakes,] now Secaucus, is written as the name of a tract on Hackensack meadows, from which it was extended to Snake Hill. It is from Sikkâkâskeg, meaning "Salt sedge marsh." (Gerard.) The Dutch found snakes on Snake Hill and called it Slangberg, literally, "Snake Hill."
[Passaic] is a modern orthography of Pasaeck (Unami-Lenape), German notation, signifying "Vale or valley." Zeisberger wrote Pachsójeck in the Minsi dialect. The valley gave name to the stream. In Rockland County it has been corrupted to Paskack, Pasqueck, etc.
[Paquapick] is entered on Pownal's map as the name of Passaic Falls. It is from Poqui, "Divided, broken," and -ápuchk, "Rock." Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter, who visited the falls in 1679-80, wrote in their Journal that the falls were "formed by a rock stretching obliquely across the river, the top dry, with a chasm in the center about ten feet wide into which the water rushed and fell about eighty feet." It is this rock and chasm to which the name refers—"Divided rock," or an open place in a rock.
[Pequannock,] now so written, is the name of a stream flowing across the Highlands from Hamburgh, N. J. to Pompton, written Pachquak'onck by Van der Donck (1656); Paquan-nock or Pasqueck, in 1694; Paqunneck, Indian deed of 1709, and in other forms, was the name of a certain field, from which it was extended to the stream. Dr. Trumbull recognized it as the equivalent of Mass. Paquan'noc, Pequan'nuc, Pohqu'un-auke, etc., "A name common to all cleared land, i. e. land from which the trees and bushes had been removed to fit it for cultivation." Zeisberger wrote, Pachqu (Paghqu), as in Pachqu-échen, "Meadow;" Pachquak'onck, "At (or on) the open land."
[Peram-sepus,] Paramp-seapus, record forms of the name of Saddle River, [FN] Bergen County, N. J., and adopted in Paramus as the name of an early Dutch village, of which one reads in Revolutionary history as the headquarters of General George Clinton's Brigade, appears in deed for a tract of land the survey of which reads: "Beginning at a spring called Assinmayk-apahaka, being the northeastern most head-spring of a river called by the Indians Peram-sepus, and by the Christians Saddle River." Nelson (Hist. Ind. of New Jersey) quoted from a deed of 1671: "Warepeake, a run of water so called by the Indians, but the right name is Rerakanes, by the English called Saddle River." Peram-sepus also appears as Wieramius, suggesting that Pera, Para, Wara, and Wiera were written as equivalent sounds, from the root Wil (Willi, Winne, Wirri, Waure), meaning, "Good, fine, pleasant," etc. The suffix varies, Sepus meaning "Brook"; Peake (-peék), "Water-place," and Anes, "Small stream," or, substantially, Sepus, which, by the prefix Ware, was pronounced "A fine stream," or place of water.
[FN] Called "Saddle River," probably, from Richard Saddler, a purchaser of lands from the Indians in 1674. (Col. Hist. N. Y., xiii, 478.)
[Monsey,] a village in Rockland County, takes that name from an Indian resident who was known by his tribal name, Monsey—"the Monseys, Minsis, or Minisinks."
[Mahway,] Mawayway, Mawawier, etc., a stream and place now Mahway, N. J., was primarily applied to a place described: "An Indian field called Maywayway, just over the north side of a small red hill called Mainatanung." The stream, on an old survey, is marked as flowing south to the Ramapo from a point west of Cheesekook Mountain. The name is probably from Mawéwi (Zeisb.), "Assembly," where streams or paths, or boundaries, meet or come together. (See Mahequa.)