Talk:Wallabout Bay

I wanted to raise a question which may or may not be a problem, but perhaps i just need clarification. In the wallabout bay page it states that brooklyn is named after the dutch words "to use" and to "loan" however, on the history of brooklyn page it says it was named after the dutch county in the netherlands "Breukelen". Now it may turn out that these are one in the same, however a little clarification and consistency between the pages would not hurt.

Also, this is my first time contributing to a wikipedia page, and dont know how to bring these questions up, so im sorry if im not following guidelines! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.139.49.74 (talk) 03:34, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

First settlement at Wallabout
This piece puts the date of the first settlement at Wallabout at 1624, but this Newsday article and many other sources date the first settlement at Wallabout to the mid-1630s. Nearly all sources agree that Rapelje was the first to buy land there from the Indians, and I have inserted that information in the piece, as well as adding a reference section. Regards, MarmadukePercy (talk) 21:05, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

First site of Brooklyn Navy Yard
The piece, as now written, says that Wallabout Bay is now the site of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. That's not possible, unless the Brooklyn Navy Yard is landfill, where Wallabout Bay used to be. And I don't believe that's correct, so am changing to read something like, 'Wallabout Bay now abuts the Brooklyn Navy Yard' or something along those lines. MarmadukePercy (talk) 02:37, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

A couple of etymological issues: Brooklyn and Waal-bocht
The etymology given for "Brooklyn" here is unsourced, and appears in no published or online referemce that I can find, except for a few that either trace back to here or are blog entries or the like without any references. Every reputable source I checked says that it was named for "Breukelen" (formerly also "Breuckelen") in the Netherlands. There is a Dutch word "Bruikleen" with varying historical spellings (Bruykleen, Bruijkleen, etc), but Google searches on any of these combined with "Brooklyn" yield no useful results. So, the etymology for "Brooklyn" given in the article is not just spurious and unsourced, but it also seems to be unsourceable. I'm going to remove it, unless there are any objections.

About "Waal-bocht": this is the standard modern spelling. The old documents usually had "Waal-bogt." The pronunciation of the -ch- and the -g- would be the same, but there's no reason to use the modern spelling if we're quoting a historical form. One published source gives "Wahlebogt." This is in a 19th-century history of Brooklyn. If I can find a better source, I will put this in as an alternative historical spelling because most English speakers are, I suspect, not familiar with Dutch spelling conventions, and don't know that "l" can be separated from a following written consonant by an unwritten schwa (= short neutral vowel). For example, there's a schwa between the last two consonants of "melk" (milk). So, "Wahlebogt" explains the middle syllable in "Wallabout" in an obvious way, even though it would be pronounced the same as "Waalbogt," especially in casual speech. GeckoFeet (talk) 17:43, 15 March 2015 (UTC)