Wapingoes, Wapings, Wappinges, Wapinger and Wappenger.

Anthropologist Ives Goddard suggests the Munsee language-word wápinkw, used by the Lenape and meaning "opossum", might be related to the name Wappinger. No evidence supports the folk etymology of the name coming from a word meaning "easterner", as suggested by Edward Manning Ruttenber in 1906 and John Reed Swanton