"lanechtskipt" =? "landish-ship"

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Tue Nov 12 20:10:34 UTC 2013


Certainly not a name for a North American
animal.  A Native American name for an
African/Asian animal?  Seems unlikely.  When the
first camel in America, in 1721, was exhibited in
Boston "just arrived from Africa", it was called
a "camel".  While it is quite possible that the
exhibitor of 1735 might have pretended that his
camel was the first, and given it a new name, why
Native American?  There weren't very many in the
towns of New England in 1735, although perhaps one went to see the camel.

I give greater probability to my speculation:  A
Dutch word or phrase spoken by the Dutch ship
captain who brought it to the entrepôt of Boston,
to the New England exhibitor who bought it from
him, which term connoted "ship of the desert", a
common way of referring to the camel in English
(documentable from the later 18th century at least) and long used in Arabic.

Joel

At 11/12/2013 02:21 PM, Paul Johnston wrote:
>Or, even better, Connechtiquot = Connecticut (Pequot?  Mohegan?)
>
>I suppose it could be an Algonquian name of some kind.
>
>Paul Johnston.
>
>
>
>On Nov 12, 2013, at 2:10 PM,
>Spanbock/Svoboda-Spanbock <spanbocks at VERIZON.NET> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Spanbock/Svoboda-Spanbock <spanbocks at VERIZON.NET>
> >
> Subject:      =?us-ascii?Q?Re=3A_=22lanechtskipt=22_=3D=3F_=22landish-ship=22?=
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Is it possible that it is a native american
> animal name? It seems similar to massachusett.

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