The Dutch place-names of the United States are chiefly confined to the vicinity of New York, and a good many of them have become greatly corrupted. /Brooklyn/, /Wallabout/ and /Gramercy/ offer examples. The first-named was originally /Breuckelen/, the second was /Waale Bobht/, and the third was /De Kromme Zee/. /Hell-Gate/ is a crude translation of the Dutch /Helle-Gat/. During the early part of the last century the more delicate New Yorkers transformed the term into /Hurlgate/, but the change was vigorously opposed by Washington Irving, and so /Hell-Gate/ was revived. The law of Hobson-Jobson early converted the Dutch /hoek/ into /hook/, and it survives in various place-names, /e. g./, /Kinderhook/ and /Sandy Hook/. The Dutch /kill/ is a /Grundwort/ in many other names, /e. g./, /Catskill/, /Schuylkill/, /Peekskill/, /Fishkill/ and /Kill van Kull/; it is the equivalent of the American /creek/. Many other Dutch place-names will come familiarly to mind: /Harlem/, /Staten/, /Flushing/, /Cortlandt/, /Calver Plaat/, /Nassau/, /Coenties/, /Spuyten Duyvel/, /Yonkers/, /Hoboken/ and /Bowery/ (from /Bouvery/).[40] /Block/ Island was originally /Blok/, and Cape /May/, according to Schele de Vere, was /Mey/, both Dutch. [Pg291] A large number of New York street and neighborhood names come down from Knickerbocker days, often greatly changed in pronunciation. /Desbrosses/ offers an example. The Dutch called it /de Broose/, but in New York today it is commonly spoken of as /Dez-bros-sez/.
French place-names have suffered almost as severely. Few persons would recognize /Smackover/, the name of a small town in Arkansas, as French, and yet in its original form it was /Chemin Couvert/. Schele de Vere, in 1871, recorded the degeneration of the name to /Smack Cover/; the Postoffice, always eager to shorten and simplify names, has since made one word of it and got rid of the redundant /c/. In the same way /Bob Ruly/, a Missouri name, descends from /Bois Brulé/. "The American tongue," says W. W. Crane, "seems to lend itself reluctantly to the words of alien languages."[41] This is shown plainly by the history of French place-names among us. A large number of them, /e. g./, /Lac Superieur/, were translated into English at an early day, and most of those that remain are now pronounced as if they were English. Thus /Des Moines/ is /dee-moyns/, /Terre Haute/ is /terry-hut/, /Beaufort/ is /byu-fort/, /New Orleans/ is /or-leens/, /Lafayette/ has a flat /a/, /Havre de Grace/ has another, and /Versailles/ is /ver-sales/. The pronunciation of /sault/, as in /Sault Ste. Marie/, is commonly more or less correct; the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad is popularly called the /Soo/. This may be due to Canadian example, or to some confusion between /Sault/ and /Sioux/. The French /Louis/, in /St. Louis/ and /Louisville/, is usually pronounced correctly. So is the /rouge/ in /Baton Rouge/, though the /baton/ is commonly boggled. It is possible that familiarity with /St. Louis/ influenced the local pronunciation of /Illinois/, which is /Illinoy/, but this may be a mere attempt to improve upon the vulgar /Illin-i/.[42]