tlahtoani

[ANTHONY APPLEYARD]

In using verbs as names, there are Semitic parallels, for example the Arabic name Yazi_d = "he causes to increase", i.e. his birth made his father's family bigger.

Citlalyani.

--- On Thu, 17/2/11, Michael McCafferty <mmccaffe at indiana.edu> wrote:

There are some cases in Algonquian where verbs stand for nouns. The Miami-Illinois term for 'watermelon' is actually a participle, not a noun. I don't think these cases are very common, however, and I can't think of a term for "leader, chief, etc." that is a verb.

At the same time, Algonquian evinces innumerable nouns that at some  point in the distant past evolved from verbs. For example, the Miami-Illinois term
/siipiiwi/ 'river' is structurally a verb, and was surely an inanimate third-person verb at some point in the distant past meaning "it is a river". In addition, the Miami-Illinois noun for 'turkey', /pileewa/, includes within it the morpheme for 'fly' and in fact the word probably did mean something like 'he flies' (or 'he flies!' back in the day, but no longer.

I'll keep my eyes peeled for anything that pops up in Algonquian that might interest you.

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