While overlooking the genocide committed upon the aboriginal folks of the Americas, we can notice that in North America the French and Spanish named things after their kings, queens, and princes, while the English, for the most part (New York, New Jersey, and New Hampshire notwithstanding), asked a local what they called something.
Earlier this evening I noticed that out of the ten Canadian provinces, exactly four have names that have Aboriginal-American origins: Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. Also, of the three Canadian territories, two have native names: Yukon and Nunavut. Pretty cool, I thought.
America? Well, obviously Massachusetts and Connecticut, Manhattan, the Allegheny and the Mississippi, Minnesota, Chicago...
I looked a little deeper. Does anybody remember this song: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas...all native terms. How about a few others: Chesapeake, Illinois (with a French transliteration), Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Malibu...
Milwaukee and Wisconsin, Nebraska and Missouri, Ohio and Oklahoma, even Wyoming is a word meaning "rolling mountains" from the Delaware Indians. Tahoe, from "Lake Tahoe" fame, is Washo for "big water". While the true meaning of Tennessee is unknown, the fact that it's native is.
Even Texas..."texas" is Craddo for "friend" or "ally", a name given by Spaniards to the Craddo and the area they inhabited (guess where it is today).
Tuxedo, while not a place, is also an aboriginal word, leading me to conjecture that any word beginning with a t and having an x involved will come from a native origin. New task: find etymology of "taxi".
Can't say I remember the song... it does seem familiar, but it's early for me.
ReplyDeleteInteresting bit about naming conventions