Missouri

[Rory M Larson]

Thanks to David, Bob and Alan for their replies on
this, and to Michael for his original research!

So the name Missouri comes from Illinois
mihso:ri, which means 'big canoe'.  It seems that
it was used as an ethnonym for the Missouri tribe
used by the Illinois, who appended a standard
ethnonymic prefix, meaning 'people of', and which
may have sounded something like ou- or we-.
The French used the character 8 for this prefix,
so their name for the Missouria tribe was something
like 8-missouri, or 'the people of the big canoe'.

Which came first, the ethnonym or the hydronym?
>>From what has been posted, it looks to me like
the ethnonym, and this would probably make more
sense in terms of qualification by canoe.

Is there any independent reason to believe that the
Missouria were once noted for their outstandingly
big canoes?  If not, this label seems a little odd.

What if we consider it as a loan word from Missouria
to Illinois, in which the Illinois reinterpreted it
as a native word?  The Missouria version of the
Missouri River ought to be something like:

  ni-soje   'muddy water'

If a bilingual Illinois dealt with them, he would
learn that as their name for their river, and could
translate that back into Illinois as pekitanoui.
But as an ethnonym for the people, he might leave
the Missouria version:

  8-nisoje   'people of the muddy water',
             'nisoje people'

This would probably make no sense to unilingual
Illinois, and some of them might "correct" the term
to something that could be parsed sensibly in
Illinois:

  8-mihso:ri   'people of the big canoe'

We would still need to get the name applied back
to the river by the French.

So if an Illinois speaker were confronted with the
word nisoje referring to a river or a people living
on that river, what would be the most efficient way
for him to modify that word to be transparent and
meaningful in Illinois?

Rory