Piscataway is a township in Middlesex County, New Jersey, United States. The township is a bedroom suburb of the New York metropolitan area, located within the heart of the Raritan Valley region. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township's population was 56,044, reflecting an increase of 5,562 from the 50,482 counted in the 2000 Census, which had in turn increased by 3,393 from the 47,089 counted in 1990.
The name Piscataway may be derived from the area's earliest European American settlers who were coming as transplants from New Hampshire near the Piscataqua River. This river is a landmark defining the coastal border between New Hampshire and Maine. This is an area whose name derives from peske and tegwe, or alternatively from pisgeu and awa or from a Lenape language word meaning "great deer" The area was appropriated in 1666 by Quakers and Baptists who had left the Puritan colony in New Hampshire.
Piscataway Township was formed on December 18, 1666, and officially incorporated by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on February 21, 1798, as part of the state's initial group of 104 townships.