mohawk/not mohawk

[Damien Hall]

FYI (where 'I' > 'Information' or, hopefully, 'Interest', but I leave it open), the usual BrE term for this kind of hairstyle is 'Mohican', not 'Mohawk', though I was interested to see that the OED has 'Mohawk' as 'orig. U.S.', implying that now it is heard elsewhere too.  It probably is, although, if Brits know what a 'Mohawk' hairstyle is, now, they may find it difficult to say whether they know it natively or from exposure to American culture.  I do note, though, that all the OED citations for 'Mohawk' (for the hairstyle) are from US publications. Anyone got one from outside the US?

Conversely, it was also interesting to see that 'Mohican' was used for the hairstyle in AmE, at least up to 1985 (there's also a 1993 citation from Lowe and Shaw in _Travellers_, but I don't know where that's from).  Does any AmE speaker now say 'Mohican' and not 'Mohawk' for the hairstyle?

Damien

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Damien Hall

University of Kent (UK)
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, 'Towards a New Linguistic Atlas of France'

English Language and Linguistics, School of European Culture and Languages

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