The true story behind Pennsylvania’s name
And why Philadelphia is really the city of sisterly love. 744
William Penn was in a bit of a huff long before he marched down the off plank to Dock Street in Philadelphia in 1682. Months earlier, he had secured title from King Charles II for a new British colony in America. The king owed a lot of money to the estate of Will’s deceased daddy, a wealthy politician and famous admiral in the British Navy. To settle the debt, King Charlie gave William the Younger a tract of utter wilderness between the British colonies of New York and Maryland. It made Penn at age 36 proprietor of 28 million acres, the largest privately-owned tract in the world.
Will had long sought such a haven to build his version of democracy, judicial fairness and religious freedom for persecuted Protestants like himself, a Quaker. “So, what about a name?” asked the Crown. Will suggested “New Wales.”
“No, way!” said the king and his Wales allies who despised Quakers.
“Well then, how about ‘Sylvania’?” said Will to the king, noting explorers reported unbroken forests wherever they went. “Sylvania, after all, was Latin for ‘woods.’”
“Humm…” pondered Charlie. “You want Sylvania? OK. But it must be PENN-sylvania to honor your old man, the guy I really liked.” The king was adamant about that. William the Younger shuddered, but what could he do? It’s not like he detested his father. He just fretted that people in his new colony will think Will Jr. named the province after himself. For self-effacing Quakers like him, not a good deal.
And so, even today, many of us believe Pennsylvania is named after the founder. Nope. It was Sir Admiral William Penn, who rejected Quakerism and the religious activities of his son.
City of sisterly love
Penn got to work right away in the New World. First, he established Philadelphia, named after King Ptolemaios II, an ancient Greek ruler of Egypt. Maybe Penn didn’t know it, but ol’ Ptole gained infamy in Greece for marrying his sister. Such sibling marriages were accepted in Egypt. Quite the contrary back home. In Athens, people started mocking Ptolemaios by calling him “Phileoadelphos.” In Greek, “phileo” means “to love” and “adelphos” means “sibling.”
Philadelphia as the name of the capital city of the American colonies stuck. Literally, you would be right in calling it “the city of sisterly love,” but it’s come down through the years as “the city of brotherly love.”
Bristol versus Buckingham
William established the first three counties in Pennsylvania after consultation with his surveyor general. They agreed on Buckinghamshire, Philadelphia and Chester. Buckinghamshire? It was the name of the Penn Family estate south of London. Here the name quickly morphed into Bucks County.
Meanwhile, work began on Penn’s summer mansion at the upper end of the Delaware River estuary. He conducted business either there or in Philadelphia, commuting 30 miles between the two by his river barge. Adjacent to 8,000-acre Pennsbury Manor would be Falls and Buckingham townships.
Buckingham?
Not for long. The village of Bristol in Buckingham was taking shape on the Delaware, a nod to the prestigious port of Bristol in England. Neighbors in “Buckingham” preferred being aligned with Bristol. To them, they lived in unofficial New Bristol.
Simultaneously, settlers were piling into a fertile area below Doylestown. By 1700, they began calling it New Buckingham to avoid confusion with the Lower Bucks Buckingham that wanted to be New Bristol. Two years later, Buckingham officially became Bristol Township. Residents of New Buckingham seized the day, dropping “New.” John Cutler, Penn’s deputy surveyor, made it official in 1703.
Hannah takes over
Though William Penn continued marketing his colony to distressed English and European immigrants, things didn’t go well back home. He had spent too much of his fortune in Pennsylvania. Major loans made to associates weren’t repaid. His financial advisor also cheated him out of income. Returning home in 1701, he tried to sell the colony to the royal family. That failed over Will’s insistence that Pennsylvania’s liberties and independent judiciary be preserved. Subsequently, he ended up in debtor’s for eight months. His wife Hannah would manage the colony following his stroke and later death.
Today we look back on the founder’s legacy in the state’s motto he would have appreciated: “Virtue, Liberty and Independence.”
***
Sources include “Place Names in Bucks County Pennsylvania” by George MacReynolds published in 1942.
Carl LaVO can be reached at carllavo0@gmail.com.
