THE U.S. counts seven towns named Batavia, each named after the Betuwe district in the Netherlands. There is a Brielle, there are 11 Amsterdams, two of which in the state of New York, not counting old New Amsterdam. There is one Rotterdam, a Breda, Delft, two Harlems, a Deventer, Zwolle, three Leydens, an Oostburg, a Venlo, a Bergen and one Middleburgh.
The Batavia story is interesting because most Dutch people, even in Holland, do not realize that it is the Latin word for Betuwe. We know Batavia from the Batavians, and at school we learned that there was once a Batavian Republic, but that the Betuwe reminds us of it, no. The early Dutch in America, however, did know. A large chunk of New York state was called Batavia for a while, back when the Dutch owned large swaths of land and proudly remembered the cherry land between the Rhine and Waal rivers. It decreased in size as they kept selling lots, as was the intention all along. The other six Batavia’s were named by families who moved from New York’s Batavia.
THERE is a Nederland in Texas and one in Colorado. There are 29 towns with the name Holland, 13 named Nassau, there is a Guilderland, Drenthe, Overisel, a Friesland and a Vriesland, South Holland, two Zeelands, Groningen and a Utrecht. There is a town named after the zagertjes of an old sawmill, now spelled phonetically as Saugerties, and a town called Valletje, after a waterfall in the river, now Valatie. All not far from Spuyten Duyvil, Poestenkill, Wynantskill, Schuylkill, Vromans Kill and Plattekill, where -kill is the same as -kil in Sluiskil and Dordtse Kil, a Dutch creek.
There is a Gerritsen Beach, a Dyker Heights after the Van Dijk family, a Kips Bay, a New Dorp, a Coeymans and two towns named De Ruyter. You can live in Van Nuys, Van Wert, Van Horn, Van Zandt, in 30 towns named Van Buren, five of which are in Arkansas alone, and the high-profile young politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lives in Van Ness.
THE U.S. is 20 times larger than the Netherlands in terms of population, and 240 times larger in area. But no other country has relatively left so many fingerprints on the US map – today’s map. Because we’re not counting all the now anglicized Dutch names, such as Brooklyn, the 24 cities and towns of Orange, Flushing, New Amersfort, Flatbush, Gravesend, Staten Island, two Hagues, Coney Island, Greenbush, Hempstead and hundreds of others.
There was never a vote to make Dutch America’s official language, let alone that it was rejected by one vote, as a Pennsylvania legend has it – the US has no official national language. Nor was such a vote necessary to begin with, because it is crystal clear who, in a country that has anglicized so much of its communication, more than anyone else, continue to color the landscape. If grandpa and grandma returned to earth tomorrow, and we would drive them around, they would think their emigrated grandkids live surrounded by a forest of old ANWB signs.
