P-ronomastics (Re: Linguistic term needed)

[Koontz John E]

This got lost in a time warp when I set it asside to verify a point.

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004, Rory M Larson wrote:
> It sounds like this is even more complicated.  First they applied
> paronomasia to conceptually translate the foreign name into English, and
> then they calqued that English pun into their own language.

Touche.  This seems correct.  Though I'm not sure whether we've been
carefully distinguishing at what stage the pun occured.  Missouri > Misere
would hypothetically involve a pun on a loanword, as does moine (well,
loan > truncation > pun ready made).

Meiguo seems to involve a loan and then a pun, or a pun by way of adapting
the phonology.  Some of the other examples from Alfred's list seem more
like the initial process here being elaborated upon with increasing
ingenuity.  In a way I think the Chinese cases are cases of using
logographs to implement syllable spelling.

Paincourt > PpahiN-something would seem to involve borrowing what might
already be some form of pun, but not taken as such, into OP and then
modifying it via a pun or at least "a slight modification."

It occurs to me that Paincourt would come out more or less ppaiN kkudha or
'hair friend' if simply borrowed.  Maybe personifying the 'friend' as
Lewis - who would have been officially posing as a friend in his capacity
as agent - led to the next step, through taking the hair as worth
remarking on.

We should also not lose track of the possibility that the Omaha-Ponca form
came not straight from French, but via Kaw, Osage, and IO, as these groups
were between the Omaha and St. Louis.  I haven't heard of a name for St.
Louis in any language but Omaha-Ponca (and, indirectly, in Blackfoot), but
I assume that at once point any language spoken in the Missouri-
Mississippi-Ohio drainages had a name for the place.