For many, the barstool is suitable as a pulpit. On its vinyl cushion, we can share thoughts as they become dislodged from our minds by a sip or two of beer. It is a place of casual banter and out-loud pondering, rather than objective fact and sound logic. Accordingly, talk of booze and booze-induced talk are not always to be trusted, even if they are entertaining.
Folk etymologies, ruminations upon the origin of words which have no basis in fact yet persist in the common consciousness, seem to be cut from the same cloth as a barstool conversation. We can appreciate their value as something we collectively find interesting, even if they are not the brainchildren of linguistics and philology. The case of the word Manhattan, both the island and the cocktail, is no exception and is surprisingly boozy.
In 1609, Henry Hudson brought a map of America back to Europe. Hudson had been charting the coast and internal waterways of the east coast of North America on behalf of the Dutch East India Company. The explorer failed at his main mission of finding a Northwest Passage to Asia but still succeeded in bringing something new back to Europe–the word Manahatin. His map, now known as the Velasco map after Spanish Ambassador Don Alonso de Velasco purchased the document, is the oldest extant document to list the name of the New York island. On its parchment, two mountains flank what would later be named the Hudson River, the mountain on the western bank reads “Manahata,” on the eastern bank “Manahatin.”
Scholars agree that there must have been other written sources upon which this map was based that listed the name of Manahatin prior to 1609, but these have never been found. The Velasco Map itself was a well-kept secret as the King of Spain kept the map to himself—knowledge of the New World was a coveted resource. The chart would not be published until 1891. Regardless, the name was out there and began to appear on other maps in the decades that followed Hudson’s voyages. A map titled “Nova Anglia, Novum Belgium et Virginia ” was the first to set the island’s name in type. This Dutch map labeled the mouth of the Hudson River “Manbattes.”
Soon after, knowledge of the island of Manhattan became increasingly more common. The Dutch permanently established their outpost of New Amsterdam in Manhattan in 1624. Though the name was known, its origin was not understood. This ignorance cleared the way for future writers to delve into etymologies of their own creation, one of which was quite boozy.
A Smithsonian linguist, Ives Goddard, notes, “Interpretations of Indian place-names have become a genre of Euro-American folklore, used as evocative establishing shots in certain kinds of historical narratives and often fondly and tenaciously believed to be true and significant.” This is the case for the etymology hazarded by Moravian missionary John Heckewelder and echoed by famed Anti-Saloon Leaguer Ernest Cherrington in his Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem.
Heckewelder related a story of Henry Hudson’s voyage. Near the mouth of the Hudson river, the explorer came across a group of native people. As a symbol of good will, he gave them strong liquor from which they became exceedingly drunk. Heckewelder concludes “the locality became known in the Delaware language as Manahachtanienk. ‘The island where we all became intoxicated.’ and was corrupted into English Manhattan.” He even reassures the reader “I have no doubt that this tradition is substantially founded in fact” as he believed Manhattan was derived from the Munsee term mënáhtiin/ meaning “everyone drank.” In this etymology, the great city of Manhattan gets its name from a drunken island!
This etymology, as it turns out, was entirely wrong, but it stood from Heckewelder in 1818 until at least 1925 with Cherrington’s Prohibitionist Encyclopedia. The modern linguist Ives Goddard is confident that the island’s name actually comes from the Munsee term “Man-ä-hä-tonh” meaning “The place where timber is procured for bows and arrows.” This etymology is well-researched and linguistically rigorous, so why did Heckewelder’s boozy etymology resonate for so long? Perhaps the answer is straightforward given America’s tradition of Euro-centric scholarship: our longstanding ignorance of native language and the perpetual stereotype of the native as an alcoholic made the story believable in collective American thought.
More than just an island, the Manhattan is a staple cocktail. For purists, it is rye whiskey, Italian vermouth, and bitters. Some garnish it with a single brandied cherry. The drink emerged in the earlier days of cocktail history yet managed to survive the trials of Prohibition. Edward Comentale argues that its invention was a confluence of increasing vermouth imports after the 1830s and a broader acceptance of backwoods American whiskey throughout the 19th century. He writes its appeal came from the fact that it was “stronger than the vermouth cocktail, yet more refined than the old-fashioned.”
The name of the drink is clearly that of the island, but the manner in which it was christened is not known for sure. Many cocktail writers have attempted to trace the origins of the drink’s recipe as well as its name as far back as possible, but the best origin stories and etymologies we have still fall squarely into the category of folk.
The most famous of these folk histories suggests that the cocktail’s recipe was invented for a party given in honor of Winston Churchill’s mother during the 1880s. The party was held at New York’s prestigious Manhattan Club whence the new tipple allegedly got its name. Many have pointed out that this is an impossible version as Lady Randolph Churchill was in England at the time the party was thought to have occurred.
We know from a newspaper mention of the drink that it existed in the vernacular by 1882, and an 1883 article in the Springfield Daily Republican educates the Bostonian “A Manhattan cocktail, by the way, is a very good drink just before dinner. It is the ordinary vermouth cocktail with a foundation of first-rate whisky. I do not advise the Boston Herald readers to drink anything, but if they will drink, I think they will agree with me that a Manhattan cocktail is about as good as anything that can be manufactured.” The cocktail quickly gained popularity and was soon a staple on bar menus.
The true origin of the cocktail recipe is likely divorced from its name entirely. It is absurd to suspect that the first person to mix whiskey and vermouth was also the person to christen the cocktail Manhattan. Whoever named it Manhattan was more or less the person who popularized it. Other reported names of the drink include the Turf Club cocktail and the Jockey Club cocktail. Manhattan wasn’t alone either. The other 4 boroughs of New York City have all had cocktails named in their honor at some point in time as well.
An 1899 article in the Kalamazoo Gazette provides a particularly cheeky origin for the cocktail and its name:
It is the invention, by the way, of a native of New Orleans, and the story of its origin is rather curious. Years ago Col. Joe Walker, of New Orleans, was in New York, and went on a little yachting trip with a party of friends. By some oversight the liquid refreshments in the icebox were confined to Italian vermouth and plain whisky, and it occurred to the colonel that a palatable drink might be made by mixing the two. The result was so good that he experimented a little on his return to New Orleans, and soon perfected the Manhattan cocktail, as it is known today. It was christened in honor of his friends on Manhattan Island, and the fame of the decoction soon spread all over the country.”
It is fitting that Col. Walker’s etymology and that of Heckewelder both involve the same story: a band of men getting drunk on a boat somewhere off the coast of Manhattan. Perhaps this combination is particularly ripe for the creation of folk etymologies. A Manhattan, therefore, needs 3 ingredients: the love of legend that goes with the maritime, the slickness of story that belongs to the city, and the total disregard of truth all too characteristic of the drunk.
Carlton, Carla Harris. Barrel Strength Bourbon : The Explosive Growth of America’s Whiskey, Clerisy Press, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy1.library.jhu.edu/lib/jhu/detail.action?docID=5179464.
Cherrington, Ernest H. Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem. Westerville, OH, American Issue Publishing Company, 1925-1927, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001743985. Accessed on 5/19/2020.
COMENTALE, EDWARD P. “THE MANHATTAN.” The Shaken and the Stirred: The Year’s Work in Cocktail Culture, edited by STEPHEN SCHNEIDER and CRAIG N. OWENS, Indiana University Press, 2020, pp. 321–44, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv153k70q.21.
Goddard, Ives. “The Origin and Meaning of the Name ‘Manhattan’.” New York History, 92 (4), 2010:277–293.
HECKEWELDER, J. An account of the history, manners, and customs of the Indian nations who once inhabited Pennsylvania and the neighbouring states. Transactions, [s. l.], v. I, p. 1–348, 1819.
“Manhattan Cocktail. Invented by Col. Joe Walker Under Pressure of Circumstances,” Kalamazoo Gazette (published as KALAMAZOO MORNING GAZETTE.), (Kalamazoo, Michigan), June 20, 1899.
“Mr. Jones Loses His Way. He Cannot Find His Friend Wheeler, but Meets Mr. Manhattan Cocktail,” Macon Telegraph (published as The Macon Telegraph), (Macon, Georgia), November 12, 1888.
“Nova Anglia, Novum Belgium, Et Virginia.” North Carolina Maps, https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ncmaps/id/986.
Verrazzano, Giovanni da, and I. N. Phelps Stokes. The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909: Compiled from Original Sources and Illustrated by Photo-Intaglio Reproductions of Important Maps, Plans, Views and Documents in Public and Private Collections. Robert H. Dodd, 1915, OpenLibrary.org, https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2703137W/The_iconography_of_Manhattan_Island_1498-1909.
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