Place names of foreign origin in garbled form

[shokooh Ingham]

Interesting about the Omaha sounding place names in
English.  You find that also in the Gulf (Persian not
Mexican) countries.  A lot of names date from earlier
English days when they were learnt orally rather than
through writing.  In Qatar there is a place called in
Arabic saylayn which looks as though it means 'two
floods', but in fact comes from English Sea Lane. 
Also I heard in Abadan of something called Simin Kulub
which originated in Seaman's Club.
Bruce
--- Koontz John E <John.Koontz at colorado.edu> wrote:

> On Sun, 27 Aug 2006, Mark J Awakuni-Swetland wrote:
> > ZhiNtheho John, ShoNgeska is identified as Ellis
> Blackbird, ... He is
> > pictured in F&LaF The Omaha Tribe pp. 171-175.
> They report that the
> > MoNthiNkagaxe (Earth Makers) did not have
> subclans, but had "groups"
> > associated with certain rites. One was the "wolf"
> or mikasi group.
> 
> KHagesoNga, thanks for sorting that out!  The Wolf
> Clan reference left me
> feeling a bit puzzled.  I knew it had to be a
> conventional English
> equivalent of one of the Omaha terms.  These
> equivalents are perhaps one
> of the undocumented parts of Omaha culture.  The
> ethnographers tended to
> be purists, and didn't elaborate on the English
> handling of things, though
> here we see that Dorsey knew about them, which is
> interesting.
> 
> It occurs to me that somebody should write something
> up on this
> English/translational nomenclature, before it gets
> lost, too.  For
> example, there's a certain scheme for talking about
> kin in English, and
> for addressing them, though I have to confess that I
> fairly ignorant of
> it.
> 
> And then, as I think we noticed a long time ago,
> when we were talking
> about street signs and such in Macy, a lot of places
> have distinctly Omaha
> names - in English!
> 
> 



		
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