Terms for "white man"

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 10 Mar 2004, Rory M Larson wrote:
> I would agree with him and John that it is a biased folk etymology that
> post-dates the original meaning.  Assuming that it is a jibe against
> whites for taking the Indians' land and resources, ...

I'd qualify this by saying that I don't know that bias or prejudice is
really the issue here.  Names are sometimes accidentally or even
deliberately offensive.  The purpose of etymological analysis is to
determine meaning and perhaps to learn from it, not to rectify it, though
I don't meant to accuse Rory of suggesting the latter.  In any event, I'm
not offended by fat-thief, which has a certain historical accuracy.  I'm
merely unconvinced.

In any event what informs reanalysis is to a fair extent a simple desire
to make sense of the term, though the possibility of punning cannot be
ignored.  Arbitrary meanings can't really be assigned to a reanalysis in
the process of reanalysis, only meanings consistent with the actual form.
Lakotas can only opt for fat-thief because the form bears a certain
superficial resemblance to it.  If it resembled 'sweet-smelling' they'd
have to make the best of that.  Of course, in the case of punning a
certain level of scurilousness is generally desirable if it can be
accomodated.  The trick is to select a form amenable to the process and
apply it successfully.

It is true that a certain set of prejudices might determine the firmness
with which this reanalysis was subsequently held to be true, but I'm not
sure which of the people I've encountered on the net who prefer the
fat-stealer analysis are actually Lakotas.  I suspect some of them might
be people of other ethnic origins who are committed the fat-thief analysis
for philosophical reasons.

As far as detecting folk etymologies is concerned, it's not always
possible, but good indicators are evidence of reformulation to accomodate
the analysis, e.g., was^i'c^uN => was^(iN)'=ic^u, or, when this has not
occurred, a certain disconnect between the analysis and the material
actually occurring, e.g., the problems with s^ahiyela as 'red-speaker' vs.
its exact fit with 'little s^ahiya'.

Of course, if a form that has been reshaped to fit a reanalysis and the
reshaped form has evicted the unreshaped form, it is difficult to know
what has happened.  One might not even suspect a reanalysis, and if one
did, one might not be able to build a good case for it.  Solid ethmology
usually rests on extensive historical attestation as well as solid lexical
and morphological analsysis, and so it is sometimes a bit of an
unavailable luxury with Native American languages (or reconstructed
Eurasian languages).