User:AquitaneHungerForce

"Native American" words

A good number of articles give a "Native American word" as part of an

Toponym

) for a place in the United states. Sometimes other phrasing is used to communicate the same idea, e.g. "Indian word", or "Indigenous word", however "Native American word" seems to be the most popular.

What's wrong with this?

There is no Native American language. The languages spoken in the United States prior to the

Indo-European language family

. "Native American" as a category of languages makes sense only from a modern political perspective, not from a linguistic or cultural one.

This fact alone means that these etymologies need clarification. It is simply too vague.

Additionally this, intentionally or not, presents a number of false impressions about indigenous cultures, languages and peoples. It presents indigenous languages as uniform and interchangable, and indigenous peoples as existing only in the past.

When I see this sort of language used I seek to fix it. Ideally I'd find the language and the word (in the language's orthography) and fill in the details. So first I check for a source and try to find these things. Sometimes there is a source, but usually the source mirrors the language of the article. If there is no source I add Template:Citation needed and a Template:Clarify. If there are sources, but they don't resolve the issue, I will try following their sources, until I find answers or the chain dries up. If I can't find a source I add Template:Clarify.

Here's what I use by default:

{{clarify|reason="Native American" is not a language. This text should specify the actual language of origin|date=April 2024}}

If I find partial answers or clues, I still leave the clarify but try to put something in the talk page as a trace.

Hits

The following table summarizes my efforts on this project.

Work towards the clarification of Native American etymology
Article	Phrasing	Includes word	Sourced	Resolution	Best guess	Justification	Notes
Taconic Mountains	Native American word	No	No	CN, Clarify	Munsee language	Lenape mentioned, location
Skug River	Native American word	Yes	Yes	Fixed	Abenaki language	Sourced, location	skog skok skok
Ponkapoag Pond	Native American word	No	Yes	Clarify	Massachusett language	Location	Couldn't access source
Teewinot Mountain	Shoshone Native American word	No	No	Reword, CN	Shoshoni language	Given in article
North Pack Monadnock	Native American word	Yes	No	Fixed	Abenaki language	Location, related word, sourced	The user Ken Gallager found the source for pack.
Inselberg	Native American term	Yes	Yes	Fixed	Abenaki language	Sourced, given in article
Channahon State Park	Native American word	No	No	CN, Clarify	Miami-Illinois language	Location
Matunuck, Rhode Island	Native American word	No	No	CN, Clarify	Narragansett language	Location
Pomonok, Queens	Native American word	Yes	No	Fixed	Algonquian languages	Sourced, location	The meaning of the source word is still unsupported.
Wasola, Missouri	Native American word	Yes	No	Clarify	Kickapoo language	Source (see notes)	The source references both "Delaware Indians" and "Kickapoo Indians", that suggest an Algonquian language. It overall treats all Indian groups as interchangeable. It is likely a poor source given this, and if the toponym is indeed from an indigenous language, it could be Kickapoo or Munsee . Article says "possible", however clarification is still possible.
Rancocas, New Jersey	Native American word	Yes	Yes	Clarify, language tagging	Powhatan language	Mentioned	The article text is very close to outright saying the word is Powhatan, however the source does not support this.
Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania	Native American word	Yes	Yes	Fixed, added citation	Delaware languages	Location, source (see notes)	I searched for other places with the same name and managed to find a source specifying Delaware languages. It would be nice to be more specific down to a language, however this is good enough for now.
Nottely Dam	Native American word	No	Yes	Edited	Muskogee language (via Cherokee )	Sources (see notes)	It was easy to infer from context that the language being discussed was Cherokee. However digging into the sources this etymology begins to seem suspect. There are a bunch of sources backing the claim, but none of them are high quality. None seem to be written by people with knowledge of the Cherokee language, rather local historians, realtors and the like. I found Chenocetah's Weblog, which although self-published is written by someone who clearly has knowledge of the language, which claims the popular etymology is false. It states that the name originates from Muscogee and arrived in English via Cherokee. The page Nottely River repeats this alternate etymology with further detail, although I can't find a source for that further claim. Overall the "daring horseman" etymology reeks of fabrication, but I can't find good sourcing. I updated the article to include the alternate etymology, but added a request for better sourcing.
USS Cacapon	Native American word	No	No	Fixed, added citation	Shawnee language	Source
Honnedaga Lake	Native American word	No	Yes	Clarify	Mohawk language or Oneida language	Location	Probably not a fake etymology given the nature of the source.
Agave	Native American word	Yes	No	Fixed	Spanish language	Knowledge	This one was weird.
Algoma, Mississippi	Native American word	No	No	CN, Clarify			Algoma appears to have a variety of etymologies, however only one is problematic. Dozens of low-quality sources state that it means "valley of flowers" (or similar) in an unspecified language. The fact that it appears in such disparate locations as Wisconsin and Mississippi makes it difficult to make any sort of guess. In my view its a very suspicious etymology, and may be fabricated. In the Algoma, Wisconsin article it also states that in Menominee the name of the town translates to "snowshoe", while the placename article lists an etymology for algoma deriving from terms meaning "snowshoe". Which is odd.
Algoma (placename)	Indian word	No	No	CN, Clarify
Algoma, Wisconsin	Indian word	No	No	CN, Clarify
Algoma, Wisconsin	Indian word	Yes	No	Removed			This article has two "Indian words". Looking through sources I was able to find the etymology of the place name, and the one in the article appears to have been a fabrication. It had some suspicious qualities to it to begin with, no source, and now I have a source contradicting it. So I removed it and added a bit of sourced info.

Language tagging tools

Adding language tags to foreign text helps to make wikipedia more accessible.

Here's a chart I use to find the proper tag when tagging various things.

Special tags
			example	lang-	lang	wikt-lang	transl	IPA-
Sámi		Proto-Samic	test	smi	smi	smi	smi	∅
		Sámi	test	smi	smi	smi	smi	∅
		Southern Sámi	test	sma	sma	sma	sma	∅
		Ume Sámi	test	sju	sju	sju	sju	∅
		Pite Sámi	test	sje	sje	sje	sje	∅
		Lule Sámi	test	smj	smj	smj	smj	∅
		Northern Sámi	test	sme	se sme	se sme	se sme	se
		Kemi Sámi	test	sjk	sjk	sjk	sjk	∅
		Inari Sámi	test	smn	smn	smn	smn	∅
		Skolt Sámi	test	sms	sms	sms	sms	∅
		Akkala Sámi	test	sia	sia	sia	sia	∅
		Kildin Sámi	test	sjd	sjd	sjd	sjd	∅
		Ter Sámi	test	sjt	sjt	sjt	sjt	∅
Irish	... c. 600 CE	Primitive Irish	test	pgl	pgl	sga	pgl	∅
	c. 600 - 900 CE	Old Irish	test	sga	sga	sga	sga	sga
	900 - 1200 CE	Middle Irish	test	mga	mga	mga	mga	mga
	1200 - 1700 CE (Literary)	Classical Gaelic	test	ga	ghc	ga	ghc	ga
	1200 - 1700 CE	Early Modern Irish	test	ga	ghc	ga	ghc	ga
	1200 CE ...	Modern Irish	test	ga	ga	ga	ga	ga
Tibetan	650 - 1000 CE	Old Tibetan	test	otb	otb	bo	otb	∅
	1000 - 1850 CD	Classical Tibetan	test	xct	xct	bo	xct	∅
	1850 CE ...	Lhasa Tibetan	test	bo	bo	bo	bo	bo
Latin	c. 75 BCE - c. 250 CE	Classical Latin	test	la	la	la	la	la
	c. 250 BCE - c. 550 CE	Late Latin	test	la	la	la	la	la
	c. 550 BCE - c. 1350 CE	Medieval Latin	test	la-x-medieval	la-x-medieval	la	la	la
Greek	c. 2200 - c. 1900 BCE	Proto-Greek	*test	grk-x-proto	grk-x-proto	grk-x-proto (grk-pro)	mis	∅
	c. 1600 - c. 1200 BCE	Mycenaean Greek	test	gmy	gmy	gmy	gmy	∅
	c. 1200 - c. 500 BCE	Ionic Greek	test	grc-ion )	grc-x-ionic	grc	grc	grc
	c. 800 - c. 500 BCE	Doric Greek	test	grc-dor )	grc-x-doric	grc	grc	grc
	c. 800 - c. 300 BCE	Aeolic Greek	test	grc-aeo )	grc-x-aeolic	grc	grc	grc
	c. 1200 - c. 500 BCE	Ancient Greek	test	grc	grc	grc	grc	grc
	c. 500 - c. 300 BCE	Attic Greek	test	grc-att )	grc-x-attic	grc	grc	grc
	c. 500 - 336 BCE	Classical Greek	test	grc-classic )	grc-x-classic	grc	grc	grc
	336 BCE - c. 300 CE	Koine Greek	test	grc-koi )	grc-x-koine	grc	grc	grc
		Biblical Greek	test	grc-bib )	grc-x-biblical	grc	grc	grc
		Hellenistic Greek	test	grc-hellen )	grc-x-hellen	grc	grc	grc
		Patristic Greek	test	grc-pat )	grc-x-patris	grc	grc	grc
	c. 300 - 1453 CE	Medieval Greek	test	grc-med )	grc-x-medieval	grc	grc	grc
	c. 300 - 1453 CE	Byzantine Greek	test	grc-byz )	grc-x-byzant	grc	grc	grc
	1453 ...	Modern Greek	test	el	el	el	el	el
	1453 ...	Cappadocian	test	cpg	cpg	cpg	cpg	∅
English	c. 450 - 1100	Old English	test	ang	ang	ang	ang	ang
	c. 1100 - 1500	Middle English	test	enm	enm	enm	enm	enm
	c. 1100 - 1600	Early Modern English	test	en-emodeng	en-emodeng	en	en	en
	c. 1600 ...	Modern English	test	en	en	en	en	en
German	c. 750 BCE - 100 CE	Proto-Germanic	test	gem-x-proto	gem-x-proto	gem-x-proto (gem-pro)	mis	∅
	c. 700 - 1300	Old Low German	test	osx	osx	osx	osx	∅
	c. 750 - 1050	Old High German	test	goh	goh	goh	goh	∅
	c. 1050 - 1350	Middle High German	test	gmh	gmh	gmh	gmh	∅
	c. 1200 - 1700	Middle Low German	test	gml	gml	gml	gml	∅
	c. 1350 - 1650	Early New High German	test	de	de	de	de	de
	c. 1650 ...	New High German	test	de	de	de	de	de
	c. 1700 ...	Low German	test	nds	nds	nds	nds	nds