etymology of MANDAN

[Koontz John E]

On Sat, 31 Jul 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote:
> Can the name [Mandan] be analyzed in a Siouan language?

I don't believe I've ever seen an etymology.  Omaha has maNwadaniN and
maNwadanaN, as far as I can recall.  The last n's can be dh, which as the
Omaha r/l is what nasalizes to n before a nasal vowel.  The term occurs as
a personal name and a name of a kind of dance, too.

> Almost all Eng. variants have -n- closing the first syllable,
> representing, I assume, nazalization of the preceding -a-.

So I assume.  Presumably something like maNdaN or maNwaNdaN is involved,
in the latter case with aNwaN compressed to aN in English.

> The Dakota
> (Mawa'tadaN/Mawa'taNna) & Lakota (Miwa'taNni) names (Riggs 1890) have
> -w- after the initial vowel, with no nasalization indicated: are the -n-
> and -w- etymologically equivalent, analogously to the alternation
> Amahami/Awahawi?

The n and w aren't equivalent.  Mandan is one of those languages which
does have nasal vowels, and as in Siouan languages generally, resonants
are more or less transparent to nasality, which spreads leftward through
them.  Hollow's analysis of Mandan has w => m and r => n when the
following vowel is nasal, so, allowing for nasal spreading, underlying
sequences like waraN would manifest as maNnaN.

> I've found 3 instances in Eng. texts (1795-1805) of forms in final -l
> (Mandal, Mandel): what is the relationship of the -l with the usual
> final -n? (I note that the Dakota & Lakota names both end in -nV.)

In Teton, -l after a nasal vowel sounds more or less like n, as in forms
like c^haNlwa's^te (chanwashte) 'happy, contented', where c^haNl is from
c^haNte' 'heart'.  I have seen forms in which =la the diminutive (in Teton
form) is reduced to =n (albeit not in Teton), and I suppose a final n or
any origin might potentially sound like l in Teton mouths or English ears.