hunka/honga, etc.

[Rory Larson]

For Omaha *hų́•ka, hoNga, we have:

    nudo`N-hoNga as noted in the CSD below (that entry has a couple of typoes in the spelling), meaning 'boss' or 'leader (of any activity)' today, but originally meaning the leader of a war party, where nudo`N means 'warrior'.

    the Honga clan, which Fletcher and La Flesche gloss as 'leader' or 'first', and which they suggest was once the name of the entire tribe.

    ppa-ho`Nga, meaning 'first', 'beginning', or 'front of the line', where ppa means 'head'.

    ni`-hoNga, meaning a natural spring, or the 'head' or 'source' of a flow of water.

In Omaha, hoNga seems to mean 'head', in a metaphorical social, spacial or temporal sense.


Riggs has an interesting series of huNka entries for Dakota that revolve around 'ancestor', 'parent', 'elder brother' or 'honored relative', including a ceremony in which an esteemed adoptee becomes huNka to the one that adopted him.  One of Buechel's entries adds any close relative, parent or sibling, into the mix.

For Dakotan, it looks like huNka means an elder or otherwise especially esteemed relative.


I'm wondering if final -*ka on this word isn't the determinative suffix we find on a lot of stative verbs and animal names?  In that case, *hų́•ka would be a stative generalizer on the root *hų́, and it would be that root we would really want to look at.

I believe both Lakhota and Omaha are peculiar in having two roots for 'mother'.  For the vocative term speaking to her, or in Lakhota about one's own, the root is *naN.  For the referential term used in speaking about her, the root is *huN.  If this *huN is the same root as in *hų́•ka, that might suggest that an original kin term *naN for 'mother' was replaced by a more formal and less touchy term meaning 'parent' or 'elder' when speaking about her.  That would match well with the Dakotan huNka meanings.

In Omaha, we have the term iho`NriNge meaning 'orphan'.  That should mean 'motherless', where iho`N means 'mother' and riNge means 'none' or 'lacking'.  But given the force of the term and the tendency for Native North Americans to be raised by their grandmothers or other relatives anyway, I wonder if the sense isn't the starker one of having no elders at all to take care of one.  In that case, *huN again would more broadly imply 'elder relative' rather than simply 'mother'.

Among the Omaha, there is a reluctance for women to speak publicly.  If a woman has something she wants said to the group, she may select someone to speak for her, who ideally is an elder male relative.  (This practice isn't strictly determined by age or sex- a woman may choose to speak for herself, or she may have a son speak for her if she has no elder male relatives, and likely a bashful or speech-impaired male could request the same boon- but it is the archetype.)  Asking someone to speak for you is called waho`Nre, and speaking for someone else in this capacity is called waho`Ne.  The wa- is the generalizing *wa-, -re is the causative, and -e here probably means 'say' or 'speak'.  That leaves a lexical morpheme *hoN.  I would suggest that the idea of wa-ho`N-re is to make someone your responsible parent or elder in the sense of giving them power of attorney over what you want said, and that wa-ho`N-e is to speak for someone in the capacity of their responsible elder.  I!
 f that interpretation is correct, the *huN (if it is MVS *huN and not *haN) again means 'elder'.

We have the word uwa`kkihoN (or ua`kkihoN ? or uwa`akkihoN ?), meaning 'progeny' or 'descendants'.  I'm not sure of the exact series of prefixes here or how to analyze them, but the lexical morpheme at the end is -hoN, and the whole word refers to kinship in a generational sense.  Perhaps it means those that descend from one *huN, or ancestor.  This word is also incorporated into the term zhiNga`-uwakkihoN, 'the younger generation'.

There is also an instrumental verbal series of -hoN words that may or may not have anything to do with this root.  We have ra-hoN, to 'thank' or perhaps 'worship'.  The instrumental prefix here is ra-, 'by means of the mouth', and this implies making the object hoN by speaking.  That might imply making the thanked or worshipped one an esteemed elder to one, or it might mean raising them up by speech.  The other -hoN verbs imply literally lifting or raising something: ri-hoN, to lift something light by hand; ga-hoN, to lift something heavy enough to require two people; a-hoN, to lift up or onto; noNkki a-hoN, to lift up with a pulley.


It seems to me that the *huN term and its statively generalized counterpart *huN-ka most likely originally meant 'elder relative' or 'parent', with the strong connotation of 'esteemed authority figure'.  This would hail from an earlier time when people lived in small bands perhaps centered on one or two sovereign men with their wives and children.  Status would be by seniority, and the leading couple(s) would be 'parents' or *huN to all the younger people in the band.  They would also, in effect, be the chiefs of the band, and would make the group decisions and speak for the group to outsiders.  They would be at once parents and ancestors, leaders and chiefs, spokespersons, and commanders of esteem and deference from the youngsters.

That would immediately give us the 'parent', 'ancestor' and 'elder relative' terms we find for *hų́•ka in Mandan and Dakotan, and by an easy semantic transfer the 'chief' terms we find in Dakotan, Winnebago-Chiwere and Dhegiha.  In Dhegiha, there would seem to be a further metaphorical transference from 'chief' to the 'head' of a line and from 'parent' to the 'source' or head of a stream of water.  The HoNga clan name would probably have an historical origin, perhaps as an elite "elder" or leading sub-group within a confederation of bands that became the original Dhegiha people.  In any case, I think that term is probably well-rooted in Siouan, at least for the past couple of thousand years, as Bob suggests.


Some maundering thoughts on this anyway.

Best,
Rory


-----Original Message-----
From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] On Behalf Of Rankin, Robert L.
Sent: Friday, May 18, 2012 1:45 PM
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
Subject: Re: hunka/honga, etc.

Mark et al.

There is no really straightforward answer to the question.  The term occurs in all Mississippi Valley Siouan languages and Mandan with the meanings indicated below.  It does not occur in Missouri River Siouan or Ohio Valley Siouan as far as we have been able to determine.  This means that the term is probably a good 2000 years old at least within Siouan.  I don't know what your contact's source is, but it is highly unlikely that anyone would "remember" where it comes from or whether it came from outside Siouan.  It might, of course, in which case the place to look for similar terms would be Algonquian.  Other possibilities include Caddoan, but no one has suggested a source.  Below is the CSD entry.  We debated the meaning/source and came up with basically nothing.


PSI[ *hų́•ka

MA[ hų́ka ‘parent’ H-83



PMV[ *hų́•ka

PDA[ *hųká

LA[ hųká ‘ancestor, chief, elder, relative’ C

DA[ †hųká “huŋká” ‘parent, ancestor’ R-157b

ST[ hųgá ‘chief’ PAS


PWC[*hų́•ke

CH[ hų́•ge ‘chief’ RR

WI[ hų́ųk KM-1617 ‘chief’



PDH[ *hą́ka RR

OP[ nadáhąga ‘chief’ RR, ‘war leader’ SW-34

KS[ hą́ga ‘gens name’; dodą́hąga ‘war leader’ RR

OS[ †hǫ́ka “hoⁿ´ga” ‘eagle, sacred one, moiety name’ LF-65b

QU[ totą́hąka ‘war captain’ JOD



COM[ Length and accentual pattern suggest there may have been an old initial

syllable, probably the possessive {*i-}.  The proto-DH form may have had

{ǫ́}, but most of the evidence comes from unstressed forms where |ǫ| and

|ą| have fallen together more or less completely. La Flesche’s OS does not

distinguish the two even in accented position.  Jimm Good Tracks 92:28 reports that this

term has the broader meaning ‘blessed one (who has been prayed/sung over)’.

This may in fact be closer to the original meaning, since it encompasses

virtually all of the derived meanings.  I invite Jimm to comment further.

Bob
________________________________
> A graduate student here at UNL forwarded this inquiry.
Any suggestions, please?  Thank you,
Mark Awakuni-Swetland

> Do you know where the term Hunka originated?  One of my sources talked about how it is not a Siouan word and was borrowed from some other tribe/language group.  I thought perhaps you might have some info on this.