Omaha Name with Unsual Word for 'Good'

[Koontz John E]

One of the little noticeable differences between Dhegiha languages is the
word for 'good'.  Omaha-Ponca has u'daN, Osage has dha'gdhiN or dha'liN
(pronounceced dha'dliN - for a good time ask somebody who knows Osage to
say 'very good'), Kaw has ya'le or ya'li (the same form as Osage, but with
the Kaw sound changes), Quapaw has ho'ttaN.  In this case, OP and Qu
pattern together, as do Os and Ks.

Note that they all have some variant on ppiaz^i 'bad' from earlier ppi
'good' + az^i 'not' as well as occasional other fossilized cases of ppi
'good', from *hpi 'good', compare Dakotan phi'c^a 'good', IO phi' 'good',
Wi piNiN' 'good'.

Also, Osage has otaN' 'war honor' (i.e., 'coup'), which explains the OP
and Qu forms, though not the initial h- of the latter (I think, but Quapaw
is always full of surprises).

So, I was interested to notice this Omaha name used in the KkaNze clan
(Fletcher & LaFlesche, p.  171):  pahi'thagthiN (ppahiN' dha'gdhiN)
glossed 'good hair'.  Of course, the name could be borrowed from another
Dhegiha language, but perhaps it's just a leftover from earlier dha'gdhiN
'good', no longer attested.  Or perhaps dha'gdhiN is still around, but
uncommon, and simply doesn't happen occur in the Dorsey texts or
Swetland-Stabler dictionary.

John E. Koontz
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koontz