re: I've Been Here Too Long page 7

I don't know how much truth there is to it, ... of old, the story goes, arranged loans and the like.

I would think Jews did most of the money lending up to the Middle Ages at least, but I think modern banking was invented by the Italians or the Lombards. I'm hoping someone will follow this up.

Me too. I found very little about early banking in Encarta, only this:

Banks first emerged in the Middle Ages when banking families and institutions began to provide loans and international transfers of funds on the basis of gold and valuables deposited with them. The Medici dynasty, the greatest of the medieval banking families, founded its immense wealth, power, and prestige on its banking and moneylending practices.
Microsoft® Encarta® Premium Suite 2003. © 1993-2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Italians, as you said, and not a word about the Dutch. What I read was wrong, or Microsoft doesn't know everything.
Charles

I would think Jews did most of the money lending up to the Middle Ages at least, but I think modern banking was invented by the Italians or the Lombards. I'm hoping someone will follow this up.

You are right of course, especially if you define "modern banking" as the development of banking that took place in Italy in the 13th through 15th centuries. The banking that took place in Hellenic Egypt in the 4th century B.C. was very similar to the Italian version a millenium and a half later. Both had the concepts of deposits, lending, and making payments by transferring funds from one account to another.
The major innovation in late medieval Italian banking was the use of double-entry bookkeeping. All we need to do is to take that as the defining feature of "modern banking", and presto!

I would think Jews did most of the money lending ... or the Lombards. I'm hoping someone will follow this up.

Where do you think the Lombards lived?

Er, Lombardy, perhaps? Very popular, I believe it was.

And 'Italians' didn't exist at the time.

Well, no and yes. But mainly yes, there was a place called Italy, and people including the Lombards lived there.
If we want to get into stuff like "Vergil was actually a Gaul", we can, of course.

Mike.

Why do people grow up "the Bronx", but not "the ... "hospital" in the Bronx, but to "the hospital" in Queens".

The Swede Jonas Bronck,

A Dane, according to George Stewart.

who was, perversely, a Dutch sea-captain, started his farm on the northeast bank of the Haarlem (Harlem) River in 1639. ... The Borough of the Bronx was created and named in 1898. It is the Borough of the Bronck's (Bronx) River.

Stewart notes "Bronck's River", but opines that "the Bronx" may actually have come from "the Broncks", meaning the family home/farm, and I've seen others say that it was "the Broncks'". I'm not sure how to decide between the two.
He also relates the story of
the settlement known officially as Colen Donck, "Donck's Colony." But this Adriaen van der Donck bore a courtesy title "Jonkheer," meaning about the same as "Squire." By that title his tenants usually addressed him; before long they began to call Colen Donck merely "the Jonkheer's," and so came Yonkers.
No notion of why that didn't wind up "the Yonkers".

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If we want to get into stuff like "Vergil was actually a Gaul", we can, of course.

Just a quick question about usage. You use the Latin spelling from 'Vergilius', yet the traditional spelling in English is 'Virgil.' I understand that the 'Vergil' spelling is becoming more common. How did the 'Virgil' spelling become established.
Do we call other people from Mantua Gauls, or only those we want to pick fights over?

The "the Broncks" (family home/farm) theory seems to be an Urban Legend, as far as I can tell. The borough was named for the Bronx River. The Bronx River was named for Bronck.

A Dane, according to George Stewart. Stewart notes "Bronck's River", ... Broncks'". I'm not sure how to decide between the two.

The "the Broncks" (family home/farm) theory seems to be an Urban Legend, as far as I can tell. The borough was named for the Bronx River. The Bronx River was named for Bronck.

And Bronck had a farm there, E-I-E-I-O. I don't know whether anyone every claimed that there was a proper name of the precise form "Bronck's Farm," just the more generic term meaning the farm that belonged to Bronck. Bronck's place. Brewer's Dictionary of Names puts it this way:

The New York borough derives its name from the Dutch immigrant farmer Jonas Bronck, who had a farm here just north of Manhattan Island. People came to speak of going to 'the Broncks', and the name then developed into its present spelling. The definite article remains as part of the name.
So they don't even feel it's necessary to mention the river.

Best Donna Richoux

I would think Jews did most of the money lending ... or the Lombards. I'm hoping someone will follow this up.

You are right of course, especially if you define "modern banking" as the development of banking that took place in ... double-entry bookkeeping. All we need to do is to take that as the defining feature of "modern banking", and presto!

And was it not the bankers of Venice who invented double-entry?

Mike.

The "the Broncks" (family home/farm) theory seems to be an ... the Bronx River. The Bronx River was named for Bronck.

And Bronck had a farm there, E-I-E-I-O. I don't know whether anyone every claimed that there was a proper name ... The definite article remains as part of the name. So they don't even feel it's necessary to mention the river.

I'm not sure if I'm being clear, but what I'm contending is that it's an urban legend to state that the name "the Bronx" comes from a practice of saying "going to the Broncks'". There's no evidence of this that I can see, and I just went through a fair amount of ProQuest searching. There were several 19th century toponyms that had "Bronx" in them (Bronx Park, Bronx Road, the Bronx River, Bronxville, but the only one that used "the" was the river. One 1897 article suggests that the "Bronx" toponymic element is a Dutch possessive, not an English one.

Granted, the New York Times archives only go back to the 1850s. But if there was some usage of "the Bronx" (to refer to the land around Bronck's farm) before then, it must not have survived. The real problem here is the "the". There were plenty of place names based on landholder surnames, but how many of them used "the"? It just wasn't done.

The holdings of the Bron(c)k family may once have been referred to as "Bronxland". But they passed into the hands of the Morris family pretty soon after the British invaded New Netherland, and were rechristened "Morrisania" (a neighborhood of the Bronx to this day), so there simply wasn't any time for a practice of speaking of "going up to the Broncks'" to develop. Maybe Dutch speakers said the equivalent of "going up to the Broncks'" you tell me if you can omit the referent of the possessive noun in 17th-century Dutch (and if a definite article would have been used). In any case, no usage of "the Broncks" survived. The "the" is from the river.
If this doesn't qualify as an urban legend, what does, I ask thee?