Crows in England

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 10 Jan 2001, Bruce Ingham wrote:

> I was surprised to discover recently that one of my students, a
> Miss Rowan, is half Crow on the father's side.  She says that he
> came here with his mother and her second husband who is English
> when he was 6 years old ie in the early 1950's from Canada. He
> has never been back and knows very little of his family, but she
> says he told her that his actual Crow name is 'Chezvela'.  That has
> probably got mangled on its passage into English and across the
> 'pond', but does it look as though it might mean anything in Crow.
> Any clues

Turning from taxonomy to personal names, and, coincidentally, from eagles
to crows, the thing I notice about the name is the v, which is not, I
think, a phoneme in Crow.  But there is a b, and also an m, both
allophones of something like an underlying w.

JEK