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Re: Most recent common ancestors
Thu, 19 Jan 2006 00:27:10 +0000 (UTC) soc.genealogy.medieval
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WJhonson...
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This site gives all your variations plus some and has sources.
Denis Beauregard...
The term "Eskimo" is an exonym that is not generally used by Eskimos themselves. The term "Inuit" is sometimes used instead, but it does not properly include the Yupik. Some Algonquian languages call Eskimos by names that mean "eaters of raw meat" or something that sounds similar. The Plains Ojibwe, for example, use the word êškipot ("one who eats raw," from ašk-, "raw," and -po-, "to eat") to refer to Eskimos. But in the period of the earliest attested French use of the word, the Plains Ojibwe were not in contact with Europeans, nor did they have very much direct contact with the Inuit in pre-colonial times. It is entirely possible that the Ojibwe have adopted words resembling "Eskimo" by borrowing them from French, and the French word merely sounds like Ojibwe words that sound like "eaters of raw meat". Furthermore, since Cree people also traditionally consumed raw meat, a pejorative significance based on this etymology seems unlikely. The 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 this etymological analysis. A variety of competing etymologies have been proposed over the years, but the most likely source is the Montagnais word meaning "snowshoe-netter". Since Montagnais speakers refer to the neighbouring Mi'kmaq people using words that sound very much like eskimo, many researchers have concluded that this is the more likely origin of the word. (Mailhot, J. L'étymologie de «Esquimau» revue et corrigée Etudes Inuit/Inuit Studies 2-2:59-70 1978.) |