THE EDITOR'S CORNER Is a Swedish Place-Name? This year, Scandinavian Americans can observe yet another 350th anniversary, namely, the arrival in 1639 of the apparently wealthy and educated sea captain Jonas Bronck at the New , his purchasing 500 acres on the mainland north of Manhattan, and the building here of his new home, to which he gave the highly charged name Emmaus. No one has ever disputed that those place- and geographical names containing the element Bronx in southernmost state, derive from this colonist. What has recently been established, however, is that Jonas Bronck's provenance most likely was not Danish, as generally has been supposed, but Swedish. The surname Bronck (Brunck and other spellings) can be traced to or ; it also has usage in Norwegian farm names. Because the primary — and only Scandinavian — language in Jonas Bronck's little polyglot library was Danish, because his peers in the New World were mainly Danes, and because his indentured servants were also Danes, it has been assumed that Jonas Bronck, too, was of Danish background and that he was a son of Morten Jespersen Brunck, a Lutheran pastor on the in the latter sixteenth century. A certain Johannes Martini Farinsu¬ lanus (John Mortenson Faroese Islander) attended the University of Copenhagen in 1619. This person probably was Morten Jespersen Brunck's son; and if he also was identical with Jonas Bronck, this would help to explain the latter's naming his New World home Emmaus and the penchant for Danish theological books apparent in his library — this being the earliest of which any record survives in the annals of New York. In recent years, however, documents have come to light not only disproving Jonas Bronck's supposed Faroese connection but also reinforcing probable kinship between him and two other New Netherlands colonists of Swedish provenance, namely, Engeltje Mans (Engelt Månsdotter) and Pieter Bronck (Peder Jonasson Bronck). The Registry of Banns in , for example, records Jonas Bronck's engagement on 18 June 1638, giving his patronymic

163 as Jonasson — not Mortensen — and his birthplace as "Coonstay." A deed executed by Jonas Bronck also in Amsterdam on 30 April 1639 specifying his quarter share in the charter of the ship that brought him to the New World, states that he was a native of "Smolach," Sweden. Pieter Bronck, a sailor present at the post-mortem inventory of Jonas Bronck's estate in 1643, was later to marry in Amsterdam, too. The banns in this case, dated 7 October 1645, give his birthplace as "Juncupping." Engeltje Mans, appar• ently also a passenger on the ship that brought Jonas Bronck to the New World, married shortly after her arrival on these shores. Church records give her birthplace as "Coinxte" (possibly "Coingste"), Sweden. Seventeenth-century Dutch notaries cannot be expected to have spelled Swedish place-names correctly, hearing them in strongly dialectical forms. It seems likely, therefore, that Engeltje's "Coinxte" is identical with Jonas's "Coonstay," that is, the old village of Komstad, near present-day Sävsjö. "Smolach" obviously is Småland; likewise, Pieter's native "Juncupping," probably a reference to Jönköpings län. These identifications are corroborated by documents of 1631 and 1635 preserved in Västra härads hovrättsarkiv, Jönköping, detailing property disputes in a local family of landowners named Brunck, that is, the probable family of Jonas Jonasson Bronck, his niece Engelt Månsdotter, and his nephew Peder Jonasson Bronck. If Jonas Bronck was indeed a native of the Sävsjö district, why has he seemed to those who have tried to establish his identity to have been a Dane? His loyalty was, I venture the opinion, not necessarily to the Swedish Crown but rather to the class of landowning, yeomen farmers into which he was born. This class afforded him a degree of upward mobility by his being able to pursue a career in the merchant marine; the ships that he commanded simply hoisted Danish or alternately Dutch flags. To the list of Swedish place-names in North America, we can add, thus, Bronx Borough, Bronx County, , the , and Bronxville, New York. A paradox also emerges: The world's largest municipality bearing a "Swedish" place-name at present is not the city of Stockholm with a population of 666,810 as of 1987, but rather one of the boroughs of New York (1,168,972; 1980 census). R. J.

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