Origin of the name Eskimo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Two principal competing etymologies have been proposed for the name "Eskimo", but the most commonly accepted today appears to be the Montagnais word meaning "snowshoe-netter". The word assime·w means "she laces a snowshoe" in Montagnais. Since Montagnais speakers refer to the neighbouring Mi'kmaq people using words that sound very much like eskimo, Ives Goddard of the Smithsonian Institution has concluded that this is the more likely origin of the word.[1][2]
Jose Mailhot, a Quebec anthropologist who speaks Montagnais, however, published a paper in 1978 which suggested that the meaning is "people who speak a different language".[3]
Folklore has it that some Algonquian languages called Eskimos by names that mean "eaters of raw meat". Linguistic research by anthropologists does not support that etymology, but regardless it is commonly felt in Canada and Greenland that the term Eskimo is pejorative.[4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
The Innu-aimun (Montagnais) language, a dialect of Cree which was known to French traders at the time of the earliest attestation of esquimaux, does not have vocabulary fitting that etymological analysis. Furthermore, since Cree people also traditionally consumed raw meat, a pejorative significance based on this etymology is unlikely.
[edit] References
- ^ Goddard, Ives (1984). "Synonymy." In Arctic, ed. David Damas. Vol. 5 of Handbook of North American Indians, ed. William C. Sturtevant, pp. 5-7. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. Cited in Campbell 1997
- ^ Campbell, Lyle (1997). American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America, pg. 394. New York: Oxford University Press
- ^ Mailhot, J. (1978). "L'étymologie de «Esquimau» revue et corrigée." Etudes Inuit/Inuit Studies 2-2:59-70.
- ^ Kaplan, Lawrence. (2002). "Inuit or Eskimo: Which names to use?". Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Retrieved on 2007-04-06.
- ^ Historical Dictionary of the Inuit By Pamela R. Stern
- ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition
- ^ wikitravel == Greenland
- ^ Ostgroenland-Hilfe Project
