St. Louis?

[Rory M Larson]

Well, the first part of that certainly looks promising.
Could pain have been pronounced /paiN/ then, or would it
be clearly /peN:/ ?  If the former, it should be easy
for an Omaha speaker to reinterpret it as pahiN' or
pa'hi.

The second part throws me though.  I don't see how to
get from Fr. court, 'short', to OP z^i'de, 'red', either
by reinterpretation of the sound sequence or by calquing.
Is there any possibility that the 't' in court would have
been pronounced back then?

Thanks for the comments!

Rory





                      Michael Mccafferty
                      <mmccaffe at indiana.ed        To:       siouan at lists.colorado.edu
                      u>                          cc:
                      Sent by:                    Subject:  Re: St. Louis?
                      owner-siouan at lists.c
                      olorado.edu


                      03/29/2004 11:56 AM
                      Please respond to
                      siouan






Pain Court means "short bread".

There is a folk-etymology roaming around (perhaps in the article
referenced below) that says that the term means "short of bread".
But that's just what it is.

The name means "short bread". I believe the name occurs elsewhere in
the Francophone word, maybe in Ontario. It is not a surname as far as I
know.

Michael



On Mon, 29 Mar 2004, David Costa wrote:

> All I know about the name for St. Louis in Algonquian is that the Shawnee
> name for it is peenhko (Gatschet's <pê'nkû>), and the Mesquakie form is
> pe:ko:neki (a locative). These are apparently borrowings from French
'Pain
> Court'. However, it's been so long since I thought about this, I can't
> remember at the moment why it was named after 'Pain Court', or what 'Pain
> Court' really meant. I think somewhere there's an article that explains
> this. Bob, does this ring a bell?
>
> Dave Costa
>
> >
> > I'm wondering about the name for St. Louis in native languages.  For
OP,
> > Dorsey has Ppa'hi-z^i'de, "Red Neck", as a term for the inhabitants.
> > Fletcher and La Flesche give Ppahi'-z^ide ttoNwoN, "Red Hair town",
with
> > the note "Referring to the color of Governor Clark's hair".  I've had
it in
> > mind that the latter explanation was confirmed by the Osage form, but I
> > can't seem to find a reference.  Can anyone point me to further
information
> > on this?  I'd be especially interested knowing the name for it in
Osage,
> > Kaw, Iowa-Oto, or even Algonquian languages.
> >