The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball as a member club of the American League East division.

Why are they called Yankees?

Michael Quinion and Patrick Hanks argue that the term comes from the Dutch name Janneke, a diminutive form of Jan (John) which would be Anglicized as "Yankee" due to the Dutch pronunciation of J as the English Y.

What were the Yankees named after?

How Did the New York Yankees Get Their Name? No definitive answers exists, but there is speculation that it borrows from the Civil War connotaion of the term "Yankee," in that the team played north of their counterparts, the New York Giants.