St. Louis?

Michael Mccafferty mmccaffe at indiana.edu
Mon Mar 29 22:51:32 UTC 2004


On Mon, 29 Mar 2004, Rory M Larson wrote:

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> Well, the first part of that certainly looks promising.
> Could pain have been pronounced /paiN/ then, or would it
> be clearly /peN:/ ?  If the former, it should be easy
> for an Omaha speaker to reinterpret it as pahiN' or
> pa'hi.
>
> The second part throws me though.  I don't see how to
> get from Fr. court, 'short', to OP z^i'de, 'red', either
> by reinterpretation of the sound sequence or by calquing.
> Is there any possibility that the 't' in court would have
> been pronounced back then?
>

No, there's no way it was pronounced.

However, here's something: pain 'bread' and pin 'pine' are homophonous.
As far as I know, nobody knows why it was called "pain court," but perhaps
he was "pins courts,"  (short pines), the plural French term being
homophonous, too.

Michael



> Thanks for the comments!
>
> Rory
>
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>                       Michael Mccafferty
>                       <mmccaffe at indiana.ed        To:       siouan at lists.colorado.edu
>                       u>                          cc:
>                       Sent by:                    Subject:  Re: St. Louis?
>                       owner-siouan at lists.c
>                       olorado.edu
>
>
>                       03/29/2004 11:56 AM
>                       Please respond to
>                       siouan
>
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> Pain Court means "short bread".
>
> There is a folk-etymology roaming around (perhaps in the article
> referenced below) that says that the term means "short of bread".
> But that's just what it is.
>
> The name means "short bread". I believe the name occurs elsewhere in
> the Francophone word, maybe in Ontario. It is not a surname as far as I
> know.
>
> Michael
>
>
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> On Mon, 29 Mar 2004, David Costa wrote:
>
> > All I know about the name for St. Louis in Algonquian is that the Shawnee
> > name for it is peenhko (Gatschet's <pê'nkû>), and the Mesquakie form is
> > pe:ko:neki (a locative). These are apparently borrowings from French
> 'Pain
> > Court'. However, it's been so long since I thought about this, I can't
> > remember at the moment why it was named after 'Pain Court', or what 'Pain
> > Court' really meant. I think somewhere there's an article that explains
> > this. Bob, does this ring a bell?
> >
> > Dave Costa
> >
> > >
> > > I'm wondering about the name for St. Louis in native languages.  For
> OP,
> > > Dorsey has Ppa'hi-z^i'de, "Red Neck", as a term for the inhabitants.
> > > Fletcher and La Flesche give Ppahi'-z^ide ttoNwoN, "Red Hair town",
> with
> > > the note "Referring to the color of Governor Clark's hair".  I've had
> it in
> > > mind that the latter explanation was confirmed by the Osage form, but I
> > > can't seem to find a reference.  Can anyone point me to further
> information
> > > on this?  I'd be especially interested knowing the name for it in
> Osage,
> > > Kaw, Iowa-Oto, or even Algonquian languages.
> > >
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