Dakota (Re: (O)maha)

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 22 Mar 2004, David Costa wrote:
> No no no. What I meant is that ethnonyms in old Illinois all seem to lack
> word-initial short vowels where the sister languages (often) have them. Like
> Illinois /saakiiwa/ 'Sauk', but Ojibwe /ozaagii/, Shawnee /ho0aaki/, but
> Sauk /(o)0aakiiwa/. Or, another example, Illinois /$aaha/ 'Sioux', but Fox &
> Sauk /a$aaha/, Kickapoo /wasaaha/, but Shawnee /saha/.

And, to bring things full circle, this last is the usual Dhegiha,
Ioway-Otoe, Winnebago, and maybe Mandan term for the Dakota or "Sioux."
Cf.  Omaha-Ponca s^aaN', though pretty much everybody else keeps the
medial h.  It is sometimes mistaken for the s^ahi(ya) 'some kind of
Algonquian' term in the anthropological or archaeological literature,
which is a tempting comparison, but there's no way obvious to me to
connect *s^ahaN and *s^ahi other than by resemblance.