Why do New Jersey and New York have "new" in their name?

Question

My son asked if there were ever an old Jersey or old York and I couldn't answer him. I did a quick search, but found no results.
Thanks.

Answer 1

Hundreds of towns and regions in the eastern USA are named after towns and regions in England since most of the early settlers were English. So, Hampshire, Jersey, and York are named after people and places in England, not to mention Maryland (named after Queen Mary), Pennsylvania (named after William Penn), Carolina (named after King Charles - Carolus in Latin), Georgia (named after King George), Virginia (named after Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen), Delaware (named after Lord De la Ware) and hundreds of towns such as Boston, Hartford, Lincoln, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Newcastle, Billerica, Tewksbury, Plymouth, Falmouth, Bedford, Exeter, Raleigh, Richmond, Beaufort, Dartmouth, Portland, Portsmouth, Salisbury, etc etc

Answer 2

Jersey is an island in the English channel and York is a town in England hence the "new" designation.

Answer 3

Jersey and York are places in England. They aren't called "old", specifically, but the settlers in New York and New Jersey were naming places after the originals, hence "new".

Answer 4

because of places like York, England. That's why the area is called New England, because of people that name the towns they started in the new world after the town that they were from. This also happens in other countries. Canada has Nova Escocia (I know i missed spelled that terribly (no offense)) which means New Scotland. New Mexico for Mexico. Mexico also has some places with Nuevo in the name, which is spanish for new.

Answer 5

New York used to be called New Amsterdam, because the Dutch had originally bought manhattan for a few glass beads from the native americans back in the day. then england somehow got possession of it, and renamed it.