Piscataway /pɪsˈkætəˌweɪ/ is a township in Middlesex County, New Jersey, United States. 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 original Native American residents, transplants from near the Piscataqua River defining the coastal border between New Hampshire and Maine, whose name derives from peske and tegwe, or alternatively from pisgeu and awa or from a Lenape language word meaning "great deer" or from words meaning "place of dark night". The area was first settled 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.