Varmints (Re: Does anyone know these?...)

[Leonel Hermida]

I have at hand a very small extract of the FC where it is spoken
of a bird named "huactli", probably identical to the "huactzin":
as a matter of fact I have in my collection of Nahuatl animal names
the entry "huactli" glossed "black-crowned night heron or laughing falcon"
which seems to fit the bird in question.

>327. *mo-tocayotia*. inic motocayotia huactli: iuhqui in huactli
>itlatol, quichihua: huac, huac: it is named uactli because its
>song is like uactli: it makes [the sound] uac, uac.
><p54-to:ca:itl-yo:tl1-v04-caus08> (b.11 f.4 c.2 p.39)

If the origin of the name is indeed imitative (huac,huac), one can well
imagine that another unrelated bird just chanced to be called almost
identically provided it sounded almost the same.
And indeed the Concise Oxford Dictionary gives for the Tropical Amer.
bird "hoatzin" the following etymology: "native name, imit."

Best regards and thanks for the entry 'huactzin'

Leonel

>A bit off the Nahuatl topic, but the word variously spelled
>"memaloose," "memaloost," "mimaloos," etc., in Chinook Jargon means
>"dead."  There are several  Memaloose Islands in the Columbia River
>--the ones I find references to are near the town of Hood River in
>Oregon, not that far from Mt. Hood.  The word "memaloose" in place
>names supposedly refers to Indian burial grounds, which makes sense
>for these islands, because the Repatriation Office website of the National
>Museum of Natural History inventories skeletal remains found there.
>Not to question Mr. Montchalin's recollection, but I can't imagine
>how this word got applied to an animal (and I can't find any written
>records of its use in Nexis or our own files).  The animal he
>describes sounds like a marmot, but I'm not at all familiar with the
>Mt. Hood area and couldn't say if marmots live there.
>
>One Nahuatl bird name that's taken a strange turn is <hua:ctzin>,
>which FK's dictionary defines as Herpetotheres cochinans, the usual
>vernacular name for which is the Laughing Falcon.  Somehow this name
>got applied the the hoatzin, the international vernacular name for
>Opisthocomos hoazin, a totally unrelated and dissimilar bird of the
>Amazon basin, hundreds if not thousands of miles from Mesoamerica.
>I've never tried to figure how this zoological scramble took place.
>Just as a matter of curiosity, is <hua:ctzin> described in the
>Florentine Codex?
>
>Jim Rader
>
>
>> What are the differences between these animals?  Does any one of them come
>> close to the memaloose found in the Mt. Hood National Forest in Oregon?
>> Memalooses are bigger than rats, about a foot to a yard in height, sit
>> back on their haunches, and have opposable thumbs just like monkeys or
>> possums do.  They like to cry out 'mee!' and this might be why they are
>> called me[e]malooses.  They are capable of getting into your backpacks and
>> would just as soon steal cookies and fruit juice from you if you don't
>> keep them at bay by throwing rocks at them.  I think they are either
>> omnivorous or vegetarian, and tend to live in troops of about a dozen or
>> more at once, mostly making their homes in rockpiles in the high cascades.
>> They are probably related to the white prairie dog of southeastern Oregon,
>> but instead of living in the plains like to live in higher elevations.
>>
>>