For God's sake, Van Buren... Van Buren!!! how in the flying hell can someone think he was French?!?
Disturbingly many Americans don't know much about other countries. Van Buren is an absurdly obvious Dutch name, but most people won't realize it.
Actually, it could be from Flanders as well, so it's more flemish than Dutch. (Flemish also being spoken in the part of Belgium that isn't French.) And while we're at it, there is much confusion between Belgian and French. I saw a poll in which most of those polled thought that the actor Jean Claude Van Damme was French. He is actually Belgian. To be fair, it usually the Walloons of Belgium that we confuse for French, and not those from the Northern part of Belgium, so Van Buren probably wouldn't be thought of as French by any American other than exactly one poster here. Although, he does spell his first name in an anglicized way, and not Maarten as would be the case in the early 1800s for a truly Flemish speaker. Also, let it be noted that van Buren was the only US president who had a foreign accent throughout his presidency, and I seriously doubt that any of his contemporaries confused his Dutch-Flemish accent for a French one. Still, after all we do call french fries French Fries, even though they were invented in Belgium. Just food for thought.
