Humanities desk
< March 6	<< Feb \| March \| Apr >>	March 8 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

March 7

Modern/correct name of a 15th century Dutch town

So, in researching some of my Dutch ancestors, I've come accross a place named 'Hemegsels', 'Hemegsele', or 'Hemegseet' where Swaene van Indijck was supposed to have been born ca. 1470. I've looked everywhere and tried finding similarly-named places, but I've had no luck. As I don't know how the Dutch languages as place names changed, and given that this was long before Dutch Indepdence, I assume it's not going to be an easy find. Could someone help, please? Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 20 Adar 5778 15:51, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. There are several different early settlers of New York (New Netherlands) which were listed here as being from Hemegseet, Holland. But outside of genealogies, I can also find no record of such a place. I'm unsure if they mean Holland as in "Holland proper" or Holland as in "The Netherlands" in general. --Jayron 32 16:20, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at List of populated places in the Netherlands, the ending -sel and -selt and similar are common, but -seet is not; it makes me think that might be a typo or misspelling --Jayron 32 18:08, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the spelling -gseet, I wonder if this could have been -geest. There are quite a few Dutch places with that ending. Wymspen (talk) 22:44, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if it's a misreading of a handwritten document that has propagated throughout genealogy websites (since those seem to be the only places that these spellings occur). I've seen that happen before so it wouldn't surprise me. But unless we can trace the original post (and ultimately the original document) I'm not sure what we could do about it here. Adam Bishop (talk) 18:24, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There is an archaeological site and lieu-dit in or near Baelen (in modern-day French-speaking Belgium) called "Hemesels". See for example Baelen's own website (quoting two publications by Heike Fock with Hemesels in their title). ---Sluzzelin talk 19:08, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I'm from NL and have good knowledge of place names. This is not an obvious typo, it looks like the first part of the name is garbled, which makes it kind of difficult. But we he no places starting with Hemeg- or Hemegs-. So I tried to focus on the last part of the name.

My best guess is Nunspeet (one old spelling is Nuwenspete). It's in the Harderwijk area where Swaene married a guy called van Rensselaer. Googling his name also leads to this area. Elspeet is also close. Can't think of other places on -eet in the country (but I didn't check that).

Note that I'm not sure, but this may help you in finding further clues (like Swaene's parents?)

Note that the Dutch language is much older than the independence, so don't focus too much on that. Jahoe (talk) 13:09, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

At the times being described, the lands would have been part of the Burgundian Netherlands, which while not a sovereign state in the modern sense of the word, would have still be recognized as having some cultural and social continuity akin to what we might call a "stateless nation" in the modern sense, united by their common language and culture. Terminology also creates an issue for us here. When the text says "Holland", we don't know when and what is meant by Holland. In 1470, Holland would have meant only the County of Holland, and not the greater Netherlands, but from the time of the late 1700s/early 1800s, "Holland" was a widely used synecdoche for the entire Dutch Republic; so it depends on when the text was written. --Jayron 32 13:22, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have some doubts about that. The Dutch republic started in the late 1500s and Hollands domination over the "other Netherlands" is even older than that. Jahoe (talk) 13:54, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's arguable that Holland was the most important of the low-country polities in the 15th century. Brussels was the most important low-country city until well into the 1500s, Charles V & I used Brussels based his court there and used it as the capital of his large empire, economically Flanders was probably more powerful as a polity given the importance of the Flemmish wool industry to the region. The economic and political power in the Low Countries was decidedly more to the south than the north during the 15th century; the rise of Holland and its cities (esp. Amsterdam) didn't overtake the southern part until at least a century later. And it is even more doubtful that the terminology "Holland" would have been applied to the entire region in the 1470s. --Jayron 32 15:26, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You're right there, Brussels and Flanders weren't dominated by Holland. But that's the Southern Netherlands, they didn't become part of the republic and were never accidentally described as Holland.

But we're talking about Harderwijk here. That's in the north, the county of Gelders, which was surely under Hollands influence. This Hollandic domination may well have started as early as the 1200s.

To me it's quite plausible that our "early New Yorkers" misnomer-ed the Harderwijk area as Holland, albeit strictly incorrect. Jahoe (talk) 16:51, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(AN IP-editor removed his/her response here, so my following two responses lost their context.) Jahoe (talk) 19:24, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Is that the same person? Born in Harderwijk contradicts the OPs question. Also i found van Rensselaer as name of the husband. Hm, strange. Jahoe (talk) 16:56, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, the husband is Henrick Woltersz van Rensselaer. So probable the same Swaene after all. Jahoe (talk) 17:12, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Some responses from a banned IP-editor were removed from the discussion, leaving it a bit awkward. Summarizing: Swaene van Indijck married Henrick Woltersz van Rensselaer in 1485 in the Dutch town of Harderwijk. Our "mystery village" might be in this area. Jahoe (talk) 19:37, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In the mean time I found that, especially in this part of the country, it wasn't unusual to use names of farms in the records, in stead of names of towns and villages. Perhaps because there were few villages in this area, it was desolate. So we might well be searching for the name of a (long disappeared) Geldrian farm of around 1470... The van Rensselaers were (rich) farmers, so it would have made sense that Swaene was a (rich) farmers daughter...

One thing I may not have mentioned clearly is that "Hemegseet" or whatever doesn't sound like a proper name in Dutch ears; it must have been garbled in some way. Also note that Swaene van Indijck may also have been known as Swaene ten Indijck or even Zwaene in den Dyck, etc. The name obviously meaning something as "on the inner (safe) side of the dike".

Spent some time on researching this today and it was fun, perhaps because I myself descend from (poor) Geldrian farmers. But I've ran out of options and I'm giving up, Nunspeet is still my best guess. Please can I have a full sized needle in a haystack now? ;)

Tonight I will say a little prayer for Swaene from Hemegseet, born about 650 years ago. Jahoe (talk) 22:04, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Howdy all, thank you so much for the responses. Unfortunately, it’s quite late here, but just wanted to make sure it was known that I’ve seen there’s activity, and I’ll be able to give it a read later today (Friday). Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | ^{Say Shalom!} 22 Adar 5778 00:52, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Research paper about the history of the Chinese heritage language schools in the United States

Just yesterday, I read a research paper in the EbscoHost database. I didn’t finish reading it, because it was insanely long. But as far as I got, it detailed the history of the Chinese heritage schools in the United States. It began as a way to educate the young offspring of Chinese immigrants in the US during the 19th century, so that they could always have the opportunity to return to China and find work, and also as a way to cope with the racial segregation in schools. Then, something happened in the 20th century, which shifted the language curriculum from Cantonese and Taishanese to Mandarin. (In modern times, “Mandarin” may mean Taiwan Mandarin, which teaches largely Traditional characters, or PRC Mandarin, which teaches Simplified characters.) Also discussed, Chinese weekend heritage schools (in earlier times, children would go to afternoon Chinese school and weekend Chinese school, probably gaining more exposure in the language) weren’t really effective at promoting literacy. Most children grew up with just a connection to Chinese culture and identity, returning all their knowledge of the language to the teacher. Anybody can find such a research paper? 140.254.70.33 (talk) 17:54, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I remember I typed “heritage language” into the keyword box, but now I can’t find it using this keyword. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 17:57, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW: There is a history (or whatever Windows calls it) which allows checking previous activities in research. Unless deleted, you should find websites you have contacted recently. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 17:00, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I’ll try. But I think it’s important to know that the user enters EbscoHost through the library. I think it’s a library subscription. Sometimes, the history only tracks the general website, not the specific page on a website. 140.254.70.33 (talk) 17:28, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]