Even if you’re not from the Big Apple, chances are you’ve heard of the New York ‘Knicks.’ What you might not know is that the name traces straight back to the Dutch.
From references in shows like Friends and Sex and the City to the star-studded ‘celebrity row’ courtside, the Knicks are as iconic as New York City itself.
@nba 🏆 The live reactions of Celeb Row at MSG is too good 📸 🏆 #NBA #NBAFinals #Basketball #Knicks #TaylorSwift ♬ original sound – NBA
With social media still buzzing from last weekend’s NBA championship win, it felt like the perfect moment to dig into the team’s (surprisingly) Dutch roots — though the Dutch are famous for their height.
It all began with a pair of knickers…
Joking! But also not far from the truth.
The name ‘Knicks’ is clipped from the word ‘knickerbockers,’ also referred to as ‘knickers’ — a style of loose trousers cinched just below the knee worn by Dutch settlers in the New World in the 17th century.
Why Dutch men have now moved to skinny jeans, we don’t know.
READ MORE | Dutch quirk #8: Dress the same as every other Dutchie (aka the Dutch uniform)
Knickerbockers and New York
The Dutch arrived in the 1600s, founding ‘New Amsterdam’ at the southern tip of Manhattan Island in 1625.
Outside of wearing knickerbockers (and likely acting as if they had them in a twist), the Dutch weren’t called “knickerbockers” themselves until the early 1800s.
The shift came courtesy of Washington Irving, later dubbed the “literary godfather of New York City.”
In 1809, Irving published the satirical ‘A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty’ under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker (has a nice ring to it!).
Irving was the first to use the term “knickerbocker” to denote a New Yorker with original Dutch settler ancestry.
How he landed on it is debated. One theory is that Irving borrowed it from a friend in Congress, “Herman Knickerbocker,” simply because it sounded Dutch enough.
As Peter-Christian Aigner of the Gotham Center for New York History tells NPR, after American independence in 1776, Irving felt it was important for the young city to have “this mythical past.”
Enter Father Knickerbocker
By the late 19th century, “knickerbocker” had become a shorthand for native New Yorkers generally, personified by the cartoon figure of ‘Father Knickerbocker.’
Sporting a cotton wig, three-cornered hat, knickers and all, he became a mascot for the city’s colonial-era identity.
So when college basketball promoter Ned Irish founded a new team in 1946, the name practically made itself. Nothing said New York quite like the good old Dutch Knickerbocker. The name got clipped to “Knicks,” and the rest is basketball history.
Are you surprised by this origin story? Let us know in the comments.
Image: Erik Drost/Wikimedia Commons/CC2.0
