Yankee, a native or citizen of the United States or, more narrowly, of the New England states of the United States (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut). The term Yankee is often associated with such characteristics as shrewdness, thrift, ingenuity, and conservatism. It was applied to Federal soldiers and other Northerners by Southerners during the American Civil War (1861–65) and afterward.
The origin of the term is unknown. The Oxford English Dictionary says that “perhaps the most plausible conjecture” is that it comes from the Dutch Janke, the diminutive of Jan (John). British soldiers are recorded using it as a term of derision in 1775. Mitford Mathews (A Dictionary of Americanism on Historical Principles [1951]) traced its rise, pointing out that no evidence of use of the word by New Englanders before the Battle of Lexington (1775) has been found.
Many fanciful derivations have been advanced. A mythical tribe of Massachusetts Indians, the Yankos (“Invincibles”), were said to have been defeated by brave New Englanders who then somehow assumed their name. Virginians countered with the story that the word means coward or slave and is derived from the Cherokee word eankke; no such word exists in the Cherokee language. These and many other theories about the origin of Yankee and of Yankee Doodle are reviewed and are all rejected in a comprehensive study conducted for the Librarian of Congress by Oscar G. Sonneck (1873–1928): Report on “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “Hail Columbia,” “America,” “Yankee Doodle” (1909).