Pavonia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavonia,_New_Netherland

Seems like JC got stuck with the corny name since all the good names were taken, like Hoboken, or Bayonne. How about we drop the Jersey and just call ourselves New City, New Jersey?

Maybe we should go back to Bergen. In the St.Peter's College area
Old Bergen Church, and an Episcopal Church on Duncan Avenue
both go back to when that area was the "Town of Bergen"
When I first moved here, I wondered why North Bergen was south
of Bergen Country -- We had the name first...

My Dad grew up in Hell's Kitchen, and thought changing the name to
Clinton was ridiculous, just as trying to change the name of
just one area in Washington Heights (between Ft. Washington and
the West Side Highway.

Hey, they are going back to officially calling it 6th Avenue --
New Yorkers never really did take to Avenue of the Americas.

How did JC get its name...

A man named Sir George Carteret gave the new province of New Jersey its name. Carteret was once the governor of the island of Jersey in the English Channel. The first settlement in New Jersey was made at Elizabethtown, now known as Elizabeth.

I really think Jersey City can use a new name lol

For an island of only 24 square miles, Manhattan sure has a lot of neighborhoods. Many have distinct monikers that might not seem intuitive to the lay-tourist, or even to a lifelong New Yorker. Here's where the names of New York's most famous 'hoods came from.

HELL?S KITCHEN VS. CLINTON

In recent decades, businesses and real estate agents have tried in vain to clean up the lively reputation of this west side neighborhood by renaming it ?Clinton.? Gentrification and expansion from the neighboring theater district have certainly helped the beautification cause. Nonetheless, the area spanning 34th Street to 59th Street and 8th Avenue (or 9th, depending on who you ask) to the Hudson River just can?t shake the nickname ?Hell?s Kitchen.?

At one time not so long ago, Hell?s Kitchen lived up to the nightmarish implications of its name?and then some?but the actual origins of the name have become something of folklore. One legend involves a seasoned cop and a green cop watching a riot take place in the heart of the neighborhood. The story goes that the young cop remarked, ?This place is hell itself!? to which the older cop responded ?Hell is a mild climate. This is hell?s kitchen.?

The second widely accepted origin comes from the name of a local gang, aptly called ?The Hell?s Kitchen Gang.? It was the transgressions of this rough group upon which Herbert Asbury based his 1927 book Gangs of New York, which Martin Scorsese would later adapt into a film by the same name. Hell?s Kitchen was first mentioned in the New York Times on September 22, 1881; the paper used the term to refer to a tenement house on 39th between 9th and 10th.

The days of ethnic strife and poverty that once defined Hell?s Kitchen are long gone, but the name has stuck. Government and business officials drew the alternative name from DeWitt Clinton Park located on the outskirts of the neighborhood. Named for the 19th century New York governor, officials thought the local park and the name Clinton would evoke a sense of New York pride. But for now, residents and other New Yorkers alike proudly call this area Hell?s Kitchen.

HARLEM

For a neighborhood with such a rich artistic and cultural history, the origins of its name are rather muted. Harlem is a modification of the name Haarlem, a city in the Netherlands after which this former Dutch village was named. The neighborhood is huge, beginning at 110th Street between 5th and 8th Avenues, and from 125th Street up to 155th Street from 5th Avenue to the water, and eventually from the East River to the Hudson River.

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