yankee

The story

First attested in 1765, when it was described as "a name of derision … given by the Southern people on the Continent to those of New England". Various suggestions have been made as to its origin: that it derives from a Cherokee word meaning "slave" or "coward" and was applied to the New Englanders by the Virginians because the former refused to aid the latter in a war against the Cherokees; that it derives from Yengees, an Indian corruption of English; and that it derives from Janke, a pet form of the common Dutch forename Jan. The OED regards the last of these as "perhaps the most plausible".