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Yale University. After Elihu Yale, formerly Governor of the East Indian Company’s settlement at Madras, whose princely benefactions to the Collegiate School of the State of Connecticut, founded by ten Congregational ministers at Killingworth in 1701, warranted the removal of that seat of learning to New Haven fifteen years later.
Yang-tse-Kiang. Chinese for “great river.”
Yankee. A term popularly applied at first to one born in the New England states of North America owing to the fact that Yankees, Yangkies and similar perpetrations[perpetrations] were the nearest approaches to the word “English,” which the Indians of Massachusetts were capable of. Afterwards it came to be applied to the people of the continent generally.
Yankee Jonathan. The nickname of Jonathan Hastings, a farmer of Hastings, Mass., on account of his addiction to the word “Yankee,” used adjectively for anything American. Thus he would say “a Yankee good cider,” “a Yankee good horse,” etc.
Yankee State. Ohio, so called by the Kentuckians on account of its many free institutions.
Yarmouth. The port situated at the mouth of the Yare. See “[Yarrow].”
Yarn. A spun-out story bears this name in allusion to the thread out of which cloth is woven.
Yarrow. From the Celtic garw, rough, rapid.
Yeddo. Japanese for “river entrance.”