"Chinook wind" misetymology perpetuated

[David D. Robertson]

In an episode of the National Public Radio (USA) show "Living on Earth"
that I heard on January 6, 2003, it was claimed in passing that the
word "Chinook" in the phrase "Chinook winds" means "'snow eater'...in some
Native American languages".

This is an old romantic myth.

"Chinook" is the name of one of the villages inhabited by Chinookans on the
lower Columbia River at the time of contact with Euro-Americans.  (And I
don't know whether any etymology of the word is believed in with
confidence.)  The word was applied by outsiders to all of the Chinookan
ethnic group(s) and their languages, as well as to the interethnic language
Chinook Jargon.  Thence the term came to label that general region of the
world, as when folks from approximately the Cascade Mountains eastward into
Montana and Alberta labeled warm wind currents by their supposed place of
origin.

The fuzzy concept emerges repeatedly in materials written by non-
specialists about virtually any part of the Northwest coast from Oregon
through Southeast Alaska, that "the Chinook Indians" lived throughout that
region, since "Chinook" or "Chinook Jargon" was spoken there.

Another old romantic myth, roughly equivalent to labeling me as English
since I speak English, though I'm actually Boston.

--Dave