Over time the name was transformed into the present-day Absecon Island. These original summer residents named the island Absegami, meaning 'little water', a term for the bay denoting that the opposite shore was in sight. Long before Atlantic City was founded, the island where it would be developed, thick with woods and lined with dunes, was the summer home of the Lenni Lenape Indians, an Algonquian-speaking people.
