Iskousogos

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 10 Feb 2004, Michael Mccafferty wrote:
> I was wondering if there's any chance "Iskousogos" is a Siouan vocable.

Well, as it stands it looks remarably unlike typical (Mississippi Valley)
Siouan forms, but this is more of a fuzzy instinct based on what phonemes
are where - call it typical morpheme patterns or canonical form - than any
outright impossibilities.  I assume the final s is to be taken as part of
the form, and not a French morpheme?

I suppose something like you could see in the initial isk- something like
ieska < i(y)e 'to speak; word(s)' + ska 'clear, white', which is fairly
widely used for translators and speakers of the local language and
sometimes as a self-designation.  But you have to assume that had
something else appended to it to account for the -usogos/usokos.