Was that the name of the place before 9/11 remains ended up there?
Are you asking whether they changed the name of the landfill to “Fresh Kills” because of the WTC remains?
It’s been Fresh Kills since the Dutch settled Staten Island. It’s named after Fresh Kill creek.
The landfill has been called that since it opened in 1948.
I doubt they would have named it “Fresh Kills Landfill” AFTER 9/11. More like “Homeland Patriot Memorial Park” or something. :barf:
Seriously. There’ve been attempts to change the name of the town of Fishkill; I really can’t imagine anyone WANTING to call a landfill “Fresh Kills” because there were dead people in it.
Wasn’t the Fresh Kills landfill actually closed before 9/11? I’m sure I read it was reopened to deal with the WTC wreckage.
This page has a photo of the area with the Twin Towers visible in the distance. 
I was told that “kill” in this sense is a corruption of the Dutch word for Valley. Kill is used in other names in the NY area such as Catskill. I’m sure a Dutch doper can confirm.
I meant to add: “Fresh Kills” is an alteration of the Dutch “Versche Kil” meaning “fresh creek”. Cite.
I’m not Dutch, but my source (George R Stewart’s Names on the Land) says that kill is Dutch for stream.
Other kills in New York include Catskill, Fishkill, Peekskill, West Kill, and my personal favorite, Basher Kill.
Don’t forget the Arthur Kill and the Kill van Kull on Staten Island.
“Flatbush”, I’m told, is from Dutch “t’vlack bos” , meaning “wooded plain”. Lots of old and unexpected Dutch names in New York-New Jersey area.
Pennsylvania has the Schuylkill River too, which means “hidden stream”…which seems a bit redundant, now that I think about it.
Yeah, who would imagine that there would be Dutch names in Nieuw Amsterdam?
So why do machine translators not translate ‘kill’ from Dutch to English or translate ‘creek’, ‘stream’ or ‘river’ in English as ‘kill’? Is it archaic?
It is “kil” with only one l, as far as I know. Try that.
Yeah, but even knowing that the Dutch settled the area, would you have expected “Flatbush” to be derived from a Dutch original that has nothing to do with “flat” or “bush”?
Hmm, that translates a “chilly.”
Fair enough. But word/language geeks like me know that most nonsensical placenames are phonetically derived from foreign terms that made a lot more sense.