Terms for "white man"?

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 9 Mar 2004, Rory M Larson wrote:
>   Da:    was^i'c^uN   (nearly synonymous with wakhaN',
>                           according to Riggs.)

I have some discussion at
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koontz/faq/etymology.htm#washichun, but I
basically follow the conclusions of

Powers, William K.  1986.  Sacred Language:  the Nature of Supernatural
Discourse in Lakota.  University of Oklahoma Press.

>   OP:    wa'xe        (wa-axe ??  axe = ??
>                           [x] is the voiceless form here.)
I truely doubt the waxaN'ha etymology offered by Fletcher & LaFlesche,
since x and h seem to me only likely to interchange for an English
speaker.  I also doubt the wa-(g)a'ghe 'maker' explanation commonly
offered, modulo some possiiblity of mistaking wa(a)'ghe for wa(a)'xe.  If
the form is analyzable in OP, and not a loan, it should be analyzable in
terms of wa-(a)'xe or wa-(g)a'xe.  The morphophonemic elision of g in
these contexts would be regular, of course. Looking at the Dorsey texts -
in lieu of a more readily accessible extensive dictionary - I see gaxe'
("gaqe'") (ablauting to ga'xa- ~ gaxa'-) 'beyond, apart, aside', which
might well be relevant, e.g., wa-(g)a'xe might be 'outsiders, ones apart'.
I had not previously noticed this possibility.

Notice that 'aside, beyond' are also associated in Latinate except,
exception, exceptional, though I doubt this has any relevance here!

There is also a less likely possibility in terms of -ga-xade, as in
idha'gaxade 'covered' (referring to wearing clothes) and a'gaxade
'covering' (referring to a doorway), or gaxa'daN=xc^i (maybe gaxad(e)
aN=xc^i) 'with fur standing on end'.  The semantics might be kind of fun,
but it's just not that likely that -(ad)- would be elided, though a form
like gaxa'e might occur in fast speech.  Gaxa' 'branch (of tree), creek'
also doesn't seem likely.

>   Osage: iNs^ta'-xiN  ("yellow-eyes", according to La Flesche.)
>
> What other ones do we have?  I'd be especially interested in
> Iowa, Oto, Hochunk and Kaw.

I'll leave these to the usual suspects, but add:

Mandan waNs^i' [maNs^i']

Hidatsa mas^i (as rendered by Washington Matthews, albeit substituting s^
     for s-dot)

One hypothesis here is a borrowing of 'monsieur'.  In fact, waa'xe isn't
impossibly far from that, though I'd expect the initial m to come through
as m, not w.  We'd be assuming that s^ was shifted to x as some sort of
fricative gradation, and noticing that final -i has a tendency to become
e.  I'm reluctant to suggest this with an even halfway plausible
Omaha-Ponca-based etymology.

The phonology of these forms in Mandan and Hidatsa is interesting.  In
Mandan m is usually considered since Hollow's analysis to be a variant of
w conditioned by a following nasal vowel, though I seem to recall that
Dick Carter had some caveats about that.  In Hidatsa, on the other hand m
is considered to be a variant of w conditioned by initial position.
Hidatsa has no nasal vowels.  In spite of both of these assumptions, this
word is clearly a loan from somewhere, even if the source is
Siouan-internal, and so, clearly, this form shows that m can also be
borrowed in at least one of the two languages, whether or not we assume a
French source.