Names for the French

[shokooh Ingham]

I was once told by Jan Ullrich that the word for
Frenchman in Lakota was was^icu-h^ca ie 'white man par
excellence', which would make sense if they were the
first white men the Dakotans met, others such as the
British and Americans having specific names. 
Incidentally I know that s^agdas^a or s^aglas^a
'British/English' is said to come from les Anglais,
but a Lakota lady in Standing Rock once referred to
the Mets or Crees who live in Standing Rock also as
s^aglas^a.  She said that to her the name seemed to
imply scruffy or ragged ie unlike the Lakotas, not
very politically correct no doubt, but it is
interesting to note how people interpret the names
which they use.

Bruuce--- Wallace Chafe <chafe at linguistics.ucsb.edu>
wrote:

> There was a somewhat parallel development in Caddo,
> where the word for 
> Frenchman is Ka:nush, which is evidently the last
> two syllables of 
> Mexicanos, perhaps borrowed from Tonkawa with a
> regular Caddo 
> palatalization of s after u. It seems to have
> started as a word for all 
> Europeans, and then later on to be limited to the
> French, when Mexicans 
> came to be called Ispayun.
> --Wally
> 
> > Thanks for the clarification on ma capote.  As for
> is^padhoN, I agree
> > that it is surprising that it is used for people
> of French origin.  That
> > is what the last speakers I worked with in the
> 1980s and 1990s reported
> > to me, without hesitation.
> 
> 



		
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