Going Dutch – gone American:Germans settling North America

This book demonstrates the most important features of the migration process of Germans, mostly from the North and Northwest, to North America (US and Canada) during the 17th to the 20th centuries. Two thirds of the places founded or cofounded by German settlers in North America bear "North" German names, one third "South" German names. This non-linear distribution pattern is indirectly dependent on the old dividing line called "Benrather Linie", separating distinctive speech patterns. These in turn influenced the name giving of places in Germany according to the multi-volume Deutsche Städtebücher. In the US this distribution pattern is rather exact, in Canada it is less pronounced. This phenomenon is governed by a sort of perceptual geography, and by the·old, ultimately Hanseatic, custom of cohesion or cohort feeling