Linguistic term needed

[Michael Mccafferty]

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004, Koontz John E wrote:

> On Mon, 12 Apr 2004, "Alfred W. Tüting" wrote:
> > Exactly the same with Chinese ... Munihei (Munich/München - mu4: adore,
> > esteem, ni2: nun, hei1: black). This is very nice IMHO as the city arms
> > of Munich show a black-dressed childlike monk ;-) There's the only flaw,
> > though, that ni2 is a Buddhist nun.
>
> The French nickname for the Moingouena, "Moines" as in des Moines is taken
> to refer to monks, though the name has quite another basis in
> Miami-Illinois.

Right. There were no monks. David Costa explains this ethnonym is
"Miami-Illinois Tribe Names," Proceedings of the Thirty-first Algonquian
Conference (2000): 30-53.

The Miami-Illinois term is /mooyiinkweena/ [mooyiingweena].
|mooyi-iinkwee-na| 'shit'-'face'-independent animate indefinite actor
suffix.

In a paper of mine on the place name "Missouri," published last year by
the onomastic journal Names, I present a short history of the ethnonym
/mooyiinkweena/. ("On the birthday and etymology of the place name
Missouri," Names 51.2 (2003), 31-45.

  I believe the meaning had to do with excrement-faced,
> though I don't recall the details of the analysis.  This is presumably one
> of those insulting names bestowed by other groups.
>

Eyup.

Michael