Queens was established in 1683 as one of the original 12 counties of New York. The settlement was presumably named for the English queen Catherine of Braganza (1638-1705), becoming a borough during the consolidation of New York City in 1898, and from 1683 until 1899, the County of Queens included what is now Nassau County Queens is today the eastern-most of the five boroughs of New York City (The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island), coterminous with Queens County, and is the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world. If it were to be an independent city, Queens would be the nation's fourth most populous, after Los Angeles, Chicago, and Brooklyn. It is the second largest in New York's population (after Brooklyn), with an estimated 2,358,582 residents in 2017, approximately 48 percent of them foreign-born. It is the largest borough geographically, adjacent to Brooklyn at the southwestern end of Long Island. To its east is Nassau County. Queens also shares water borders with the boroughs of Manhattan and The Bronx Queens County also is the second most populous county in the U.S. state of New York, behind Brooklyn, which is coterminous with Kings County. Queens is the fourth most densely populated county among New York City's boroughs, as well as in the United States See the web site for more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queens Queens, established in 1683, is one of the five boroughs in New York City: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island See Queens in British Colonial America for details and the web site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queens