Tetons (was Tatoosh Island ...)

[Liland Brajant Ros']

>From: Mike Cleven <ironmtn at BIGFOOT.COM>
>Reply-To: Mike Cleven <ironmtn at BIGFOOT.COM>
>To: CHINOOK at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
>Subject: Re: Tatoosh Island = a Makah man's name?
>Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2001 22:30:57 -0800
>
>Liland Brajant Ros' wrote:
> >
> > >From: Mike Cleven <ironmtn at BIGFOOT.COM>
> > >Reply-To: Mike Cleven <ironmtn at BIGFOOT.COM>
> > >To: CHINOOK at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> > >Subject: Re: Tatoosh Island = a Makah man's name?
> > >Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2001 20:37:50 -0800
> > >
> > >                                                   I'm sure there are
> > >scores of other such examples of tatooshage around the whole continent;
> >
> > E.g. maybe the mountains of western Wyoming (south of Yellowstone Park)
> > known as the Tetons?
>
>
>Hmmmmm.  It's no accident that that's Metis/canadien French FWIK.  The
>sonic congruity with tatoosh seems odd, unless it's possible that
>Algonkian adapted the word from French, or it's just a
>coincidence.....(unless "tetons" is, mebbe, Spanish?)
>
>MC

A Google® search for "teton breast" yields this:

http://www.grand.teton.national-park.com/wwwboard/messages/94.html

I assume there's an underlying connection, etymologically, between F "teton"
and E "teat, tit". Just a guess, though; haven't researched it. What I have
always wondered about in this connection, though, is where "Teton [Sioux]"
as a synonym or semi-synonym of "Lakota (Sioux)", i.e. as distinct from
"Yankton [Sioux]" = "Nakota (Sioux)" and "Santee [Sioux]" = "Dakota
(Sioux)". (If I recall my Sioux dialectology aright.) (Of course, "Sioux"
itself is, I'm pretty sure, a French or Métis rendering of the suffix from a
less-than-flattering Ojibwe ethnonym for the D/L/Nakota. But does "Teton" in
that connection come from the Wyoming mountains, or from some other
connotative link to "breast", or is there a Native etymology that conflows
with the French? Or what? Alan Hartley maybe?

lilEnd

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