[Lexicog] "Christian"

[Peter Kirk]

On 25/02/2005 01:14, William J Poser wrote:

>...
>There's another curious usage in Carrier. The Carrier word for
>Indians of the South Asian variety is /hindu/, borrowed from
>English. Ironically, the great majority of Asian Indians in the
>area are Sikhs, who would probably not be pleased if they knew
>that they were referred to as Hindu.
>
>
>
But this is in fact the original meaning of Hindu, a loan word from
Persian referring to the people of India (Hind, in Persian etc) and only
secondarily to their majority religion. Cf. Hindi, the language, which
is not restricted to any one religion, and the Hindu Kush which is
mostly in Muslim majority territory.

Do these peoples have related words referring to Native Americans?
Russian has some interesting distinctions here (masculine / feminine):

Indiya = India
indeyets / indeytsa = native American
indiyets / indiytsa = south Asian Indian
indus = Hindu
indyuk / indeyka or indyushka = turkey

And in Azerbaijani (no gender distinctions made):

Hind = India
hindi = native American
hindli = south Asian Indian (regular -li ethnic suffix)
hindu = Hindu
hindushka = turkey (an odd case of a Russian suffix on an Azerbaijani root)

--
Peter Kirk
peter at qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk at qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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