The name was a Munsee language term for the Unami-speakers of west-central New Jersey. Moravian missionaries called the Lenape people of the Forks region near Easton, Pennsylvania "Unami," and the Northern Unami language-speakers in New Jersey "Unalachtigo." It is debated whether Unalachtigo constituted a distinct dialect of Unami.[4] Unalachtigo words were recorded in 17th-century vocabulary drawn from the Sankhikan band of Lenape in New Jersey.[5]
"Unalachtigo" probably came from the term wə̆nálâhtko·w, which according to Ives Goddard has an unknown translation. Some sources translate unalachtigo as meaning "people who live near the ocean", or "people who live down by the water"[6] Other spellings include Unalâchtigo (1818) and Wunalàchtigo (1798).[3]
^Lenapehoking is not a historical term, but was coined to describe the area in 1984 by Nora Thompson Dean ("Touching Leaves"), a Delaware elder and Lenape speaker, for a study by Herbert C. Kraft.[2]
Newman, Andrew. On Records: Delaware Indians, Colonists, and the Media of History and Memory. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012. ISBN978-080323986-9.