MANDAN

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 6 Sep 1999, Alan H. Hartley wrote:

> Hayden (1862, p. 426) has "The Mandans, or Mi-ah'ta-nes [dot above h;
> long e], "people on the bank"(of the river), as they call themselves".
> Is this analyzable?

Hollow gives waN'pte (ma'pte) as 'river bank' and waN'tah (maNta ~
maNtahe) as river', e.g., MaNta ~ MaNtahe 'river, Missouri River', MaNta
saraNks 'Short River', maNtamiNnaNk 'river boat'.  Clearly there is some
resemblance between Mandan, at least in French and English, and 'river',
though the last vowel isn't nasal.  The first and last syllable of
mi-ah'ta-nes also seem out of place if this is compared to maNta(he).
It appears that 'people on/of' is to be understood.

My suspicion is that the gloss here is a folk etymology, as the details
don't work for the form actually cited.

One might wonder to what extent something like maNwadaNniN might reflect
maNta, of course.  The problem is that there's no immediately obvious
account for the structure of the longer form in terms of the shorter one
and reasonable other elements or typical Siouan sound proceses.

JEK