As a native New Jersyian, I\u2019ve heard about the unusual sounding names our great state offers. In my early years I grew up in Whippany and learned that the name came from the Whippanong Native Americans who lived there. Mention the name Succasunna to anyone outside of the state and they\u2019re like \u201cWhat? Who?!\u201d Many of our town, city names in the state are derived from the language of the Lenape Native Americans. A few months back, in the NJ Herald there was an article detailing the various town names derived from the Lenapes and what they mean. Here’s the list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00b7 Pequannock \u2013 land cleared for farming<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00b7 Passaic \u2013 where the water goes over the falls (makes sense)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00b7 Hackensack \u2013 hook shaped winding river<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00b7 Hoboken \u2013 tobacco pipe (Frank Sinatra was often pictured with a pipe)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00b7 Ho-Ho-Kus \u2013 red cedar<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00b7 Mahwah \u2013 meeting place, smiling faces<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00b7 Moonachie \u2013 possibly named for Chief Monachie<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00b7 Paramus \u2013 turkey river<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just for fun in writing this blog I decided to search for unusual NJ town names. Ever heard of Wickatunk or Manunka Chunk? Me either? In fact, the latter sounds like a new ice cream flavor from Ben and Jerry\u2019s! They exist though with many others. What unusual sounding NJ towns do you know about? Tell us in the comment section below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a native New Jersyian, I\u2019ve heard about the unusual sounding names our great state offers. In my early years I grew up in Whippany and learned that the name came from the Whippanong Native Americans who lived there. Mention the name Succasunna to anyone outside of the state and they\u2019re like \u201cWhat? Who?!\u201d Many of our town, city names in the state are derived from the language of the Lenape Native Americans. A few months back, in the NJ Herald there was an article detailing the various town names derived from the Lenapes and what they mean.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4609,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2025-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/familypromisesussex.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/familypromisesussex.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/familypromisesussex.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familypromisesussex.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familypromisesussex.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/familypromisesussex.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4610,"href":"https:\/\/familypromisesussex.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608\/revisions\/4610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familypromisesussex.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/familypromisesussex.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familypromisesussex.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familypromisesussex.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}