moose/orignal

[Aron Faegre]

Klahowya Yann,

Klonas wake siah copa Wawa.  Have I got one for you!   The origin of the
word 'Oregon' has not been pinned down last I heard.  Lewis McArthur's
classic 'Oregon Geographic Names' admits as much and spins around a couple
ideas, without much success.  It does say: 'We believe it probable that the
name Oregon arose out of some circumstances connected with western
explorations of the French' (pp.640), but I don't see that he ever tries out
Orignal!  If you've ever seen a herd of Oregon elk, you should (and still
can) -- they are impressive.  Not a bad animal to name a region after. What
do you think?  Now for an initiative to rename the state 'Moolack'?

Aron Faegre

janilta wrote:

> Hello, Mike,
>
> Well, I don't know much about elks in Europe but considering the
> linguistical point of view of a surviving population of elks in Euskadi
> (Basque Country), the Basque word would also have remained into French
> local languages which is not the case...
> The French word (rarely used since the animal itself does not exist in
> France) is 'elan' which is close to the Indo-European root of this very
> word 'eln' or 'elk' (common to every North-European language).
>
> The main source of French immigration to Canada was Normandie and Poitou
> (I assume that what you call 'French Breton dialect' is Gallo, a dialect
> of French with some Brezhoneg/Breton influence spoken in the East of
> Bretagne, but distinct from the dialects spoken in Poitou even if these
> regions are not so far from one another), regions where any
> Euskara/Basque influence would be impossible.
> And as we mentioned earlier, people from these regions would have no
> notion of elk anyway. No 'orignal' word brought from France I think.
>
> So, if we go back to 'orignal', the various sources give Basque as
> origin (I am not the original source of this theory !). So it could be
> as I said 'orein' ('stag'). In Euskara, 'the stag' would thus be
> 'oreina' and 'the stags', 'oreinak', which is close to apparently the
> first recorded form of 'orignal', 'orignac'. (barkatu ! ez dut euskaraz
> hitz egiten...).
>
> According to John Holm's 'Pidgins & Creoles', when Cartier explored the
> Gulf of St-Laurent in 1542, the Native populations still understood
> (some) Basque Pidgin and the existence of Basque Pidgin is even recorded
> as late as 1710... so it is thus not impossible that during all these
> years some Basque Pidgin words entered the French spoken in
> Nouvelle-France (Canada). In a book dating from 1617, the author even
> mentioned 'Souriquois' words thought to be Native (Micmac) ones...
> whereas in fact they were Basque Pidgin ('zurikoa' meaning 'the
> (language) of the Whites' in Euskara/Basque).
>
> And apparently, even US 'gazoony' comes from Maritime Basque
> 'gassuna'... But we're far from Wawa here... ;-)
>
> Regards, Yann.