(O)maha

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 22 Mar 2004, David Costa wrote:
> Only in the sense that initial short vowels come and go unpredictably with
> tribe names in M-I (and elsewhere in central Algonquian). It can't be normal
> phonological processes, since word-initial short vowels are *not* deleted by
> sound law in old Illinois. In the modern (19th century) language, yes.
>
> Incidentally, this word never would have been */oma(:)ha/ in Miami-Illinois,
> since word-initial short /o/ is not allowed in the language. If it ever had
> an initial V, it only could have been /a/. But no name for the Omaha is
> attested in any Miami-Illinois source, other than Marquette's map.
>
> There *is* an attested name for the Omaha in Shawnee, though: /maha/, plural
> /mahaaki/.

So perhaps the form Maha may owe more to sporadic deletion of short
initial vowels in Miami-Illinois than to any hearing problem on the part
of Lewis & Clark (as I first thought, some years ago) or to French
truncated names (as I've wondered more recently) or to reanalysis of o- as
French aux (as I wondered over the weekend)?

I take it we can assume that Shawnee is not a particularly likely source
for Marquette's Maha listing - more likely Ojibwe or Miami-Illinois?  I'm
not aware of any of the relevant or even irrelevant Siouan languages
having any problems with initial vowels, short or long.

JEK