Speaking of Words: Chipmunks, Skunks, Woodchucks, and Moose

Speaking of Words By Michael Ferber

What do these common New Hampshire critters have in common? Well, they’re all mammals, of course. But more interesting, at least to word-collectors like me, is that their names all come from Native American languages. They don’t look like it. Chipmunk and woodchuck look like compounds of English words; skunk also looks English enough, as if it were derived from the past tense of a verb to skink ; and moose looks a lot like mouse . But spelling is deceptive. The words are attempts to put into the English alphabet sounds strange to English ears. Chipmunk comes from an Odawa word jidmoonh , or possibly from ajidamoo , a word in a kindred language, Ojibwe, though I have my doubts about the spelling of those words as well. They mean “red squirrel,” it seems, but that’s close enough. Woodchuck comes from a New England Algonquian language, perhaps Narragansett, where the word for this creature is ockqutchaun or something similar. Skunk is an Abenaki word, segankw or segongw; it may have entered English right here in New Hampshire! Moose is also Abenaki (mos), though maybe from the Maine branch.

All these languages belong to the huge Algonquian family, sometimes called Algic, with representatives as far west as the Blackfeet and Arapahoe, north into Canada with the Cree, and south along the eastern seaboard into Virginia.  A good index of how widespread this family once was is that nine American states have Algonquian names, though there is some question about Kentucky.  Three of the nine begin with the same proto-Algic word, meaning “big”: Massachusetts (“big hill”), Michigan (“big lake”), and Mississippi (“big river”).  For a time it seemed that Missouri was another “big” state, but now it appears the word really means “wood boats” (dugouts) or those who use them.  The others are Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, and Wisconsin.  There are probably seventeen more states with Native names—probably, because Oregon is in question.  (Idaho was dreamed up by a white man, and Indiana doesn’t count.)  As for “big,” here in New Hampshire we have Mascoma, which may mean “much grass,” and Massabesic, which means “big brook,” both in Abenaki.

But we were talking about animals. At least six more familiar creatures have names from Algonquian tribes. Caribou comes to English via French from Micmac quaripu; opossum derives from Virginia Algonquian opassom , meaning “white dog”; quahog comes from Narragansett poquaûhock , which means something like “lumpy molluscs”; raccoon is a Virginia Algonquian word, something like aroughcun ; terrapin probably also comes from Virginia Algonquian; and muskrat seems to derive from Powhatan muscacus , meaning “it is red,” or something similar in Abenaki, though the Oxford English Dictionary thinks it is an English compound, which is what it looks like after being wrung through English spelling.

We get several more animal words from different tribes after being filtered by Spanish. Coyote comes from coyotl , a word in a Mexican language; iguana comes from Taino (Caribbean) iwana ; llama , of course, is ultimately Peruvian; puma comes from Quechua púma . Another name for the puma, cougar , passed through French from guazu ara in Guarani.

There is also a great feast of food words that we owe to the first nations. From Algonquian tribes we picked up hickory , hominy , pecan , persimmon , pone (as in cornpone ), squash , and succotash . If these don’t titillate your palate, there is generous help from the southwest. From Nahuatl, an Uto-Aztecan language widely spoken in Mexico, we have garnered avocado , cocoa (and cacao ), chili , chipotle , chocolate , quacamole , tamale , and tomato , a delicious and fairly balanced vegetarian diet, though a little lacking in starch. From Quechua, a family still widely spoken in and around Peru, we get the starch we need: potato and quinoa , not to mention lima beans. If we round up most of these foods and grill a little moose or caribou, we will have a complete barbecue , after which we can repair to our hammock and smoke some tobacco , those last three nouns brought to us from some Arawakan languages in South America. If we need a drink, we have tequila (Nahuatl) on tap; if we need something stronger, well, there is peyote (Nahuatl) and cocaine (Quechua).

It might be better for us to put on our moccasins (Algonquian), and go for a paddle in our kayak (Inuit) or canoe (Caribbean). If it’s snowy out, a ride on a toboggan (Algonquian) might be just the thing to clear our minds.

It is a sad fact that that there are words in American English that come from languages that no longer exist. Narragansett went extinct in the nineteenth century. Efforts are underway to revive it, along with several other languages, but once the chain of native speakers is broken, it is impossible to reconstruct more than an abstract and awkward mirror of the original. If the language was lost recently, and enough auditory tapes of native speakers had been made, then there might be some hope, but it might still take a generation of hard work.

It’s difficult to imagine our life, quite aside from our vocabulary, without the things that these Native words name. Even, to some extent, politics. There is a theory that the Six Nation or Haudenosaunee Confederacy of central New York tribes (first the Seneca, Cayuga, Onandaga, Oneida, and Mohawk, later the Tuscarora) served as a model for the American states when they confederated after the War of Independence. That was the opinion of the United States Senate, at least, as stated in a resolution of 1988. However true this may be, we draw some of our political words from Native tribes, though a few of the words are jocular and a little condescending. Recently we watched two big powwows (Algonquian) to see if they would each form a unified caucus (Algonquian) (they did so) as they nominated their mugwump (Algonquian) to be elected high muck-a-muck (Chinook or Nootka, from the Pacific Northwest). I hope we get the right sachem (Algonquian) in November. We will need a good one.

I am happy to hear from readers with comments or questions: mferber@unh.edu .

A good list of Native American words in English may be found on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_from_Indigenous_languages_of_the_Americas

Michael Ferber moved to New Hampshire in 1987 to join the English Department at UNH, from which he is now retired. Before that he earned his BA in Ancient Greek at Swarthmore College and his doctorate in English at Harvard, taught at Yale, and served on the staff of the Coalition for a New Foreign Policy in Washington, DC. In 1968 he stood trial in Federal Court in Boston for conspiracy to violate the draft law, with the pediatrician Benjamin Spock and three other men. He has published many books and articles on literature, and has a deep interest in linguistics. He is married to Susan Arnold; they have a daughter in San Francisco.