Biloxi 'moon'

[David Kaufman]

Hi all,

I have a rather odd but I hope interesting hypothesis about the word for moon in Biloxi, nahiNte.  I'm wondering if this may be derived from the word for 'sun', ina + the word for 'egg' iNti or iNdi.  It seems that initial vowels are sometimes lost in Biloxi compounds, e.g., aNyaa-xi 'sacred man, king, shaman' becomes 'yaaxi' in Gatschet's data.  Thus perhaps dropping the initial i of 'ina' leaves na.  It is also apparently common for Biloxi vowel initial words to add an h sound, such as 'aNyaa' or 'haNyaa' and in this case the h may serve an epenthetic purpose between two vowels as well, so that na + (h)iNdi or (h)iNti = nahiNte, nahiNti (e and i, acc. to Haas, were allophonic and pronounced somewhere between ay and ee), thus moon or 'sun egg'.  Does anyone know of other languages that may have such a metaphor, 'egg of the sun' or such for moon?  The moon is considered female according to Biloxi mythology, which might lend more credence to this
 idea.  Any thoughts?

Dave



      
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