Brooklyn

Brooklyn takes its name from Breukelen, a small Dutch town whose settlers brought it across the Atlantic in the seventeenth century and planted it on the shore of the East River. The meaning traces loosely to "broken land" or "marshland," though the name has long outgrown its etymology. It broke into widespread American use in the late 1990s, climbed into the top 50 by 2011, and became one of the defining borough-as-first-name choices of its generation. Brooklyn carries street-corner music, brownstone light, and a kind of urban pastoral. It feels distinctly American, contemporary, and a little bit unflappable.