ASB puza

[BARudes at aol.com]

Well, since you have mentioned Iroquoian, I guess I will jump in here. The
words for 'cat', 'panther', 'wild cat' are much more diverse than you lead one
to believe. The word for an ordinary domestic cat appears as Tuscarora
t'a:ku:0, Seneca ta:kos, and similar forms in Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, and Mohawk. It
is general agreed these are loan words form Dutch de poes. The most
widespread word for a 'wild cat' is Cherokee gvhe 'bobcat', Tuscarora k'eNhreks
'wildcat', Wyandot y'eNhri$ 'wildcat', Seneca heN:es 'panther, tiger, leopard',
Onondaga k'eNhres 'wildcat', Oneida k`v:les 'wildcat', Mohawk k`vh:es 'wildcat'.
Then there is the word you cite, which is a Mohawk word, atí:ru, which has
cognate in Oneida (atí:lu).

The form you cite as Iroquoian is actually the Mohawk word for a 'skunk', for
which there is a cognate in Oneida vt'i:lu 'racoon', Wyandot ati:roN 'skunk',
Huron tiron 'skunk', Tuscarora n'e?reN? 'skunk' and Cherokee dili 'skunk'.

There are a variety of other words for larger or smaller wild cats in the
individual languages. For example, the Tuscarora word for a 'panther' is
tkeNw`e:nuh.

I would urge great caution in lumping words for 'cat' from diverse North
American languages together just because they start with a /p/ (or /k/ in
Iroquoian) and contain a sibilant. Sources for borrowing include, but are not limited
to English pussy, Dutch (de) poes, Alongquian *pin$iwa, French pichou (as a
reborrowing). There is also the possibility that, given that such a range of
language have words of a similar form, one is dealing at least in part with some
form of independent innovation of an imitative word.

Blair