User:CMurdock/sandbox

The most common name for the confederacy, Iroquois, is of somewhat obscure origin. The first time it appears in writing is in the account of Samuel de Champlain of his journey to Tadoussac in 1603, where it occurs as "Irocois". Other spellings occurring in the earliest sources include "Erocoise", "Hiroquois", "Hyroquoise", "Irecoies", "Iriquois", "Iroquaes", "Irroquois", and "Yroquois". In the French spoken at the time, this would have been pronounced as [irokwe] or [irokwɛ]. Over the years, several competing theories have been proposed for this name's ultimate origin— the earliest such proposal is by the Jesuit priest Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix, who wrote in 1744:

The name Iroquois is purely French, and is formed from the term Hiro or Hero, which means I have said— with which these Indians close all their addresses, as the Latins did of old with their dixi— and of Koué, which is a cry sometimes of sadness, when it is prolonged, and sometimes of joy, when it is pronounced shorter.

In 1883, Horatio Hale wrote that the Charlevoix etymology was dubious, and that "no other nation or tribe of which we have any knowledge has ever borne a name composed in this whimsical fashion." Hale suggested instead that the term came Huron, and was cognate with Mohawk ierokwa "they who smoke" or Cayuga iakwai "a bear". J.N.B. Hewitt responded to Hale's etymology in 1888 by expressing doubt that either of those words even exist in the respective languages. His preferred etymology at the time was from Montagnais irin "true, real" and ako "snake", plus the French -ois suffix, though he later revised his theory to state that the source was Algonquin Iriⁿakhoiw. However, none of these etymologies gained widespread acceptance, and by 1978 Ives Goddard could write: "No such form is attested in any Indian language as a name for any Iroquoian group, and the ultimate origin and meaning of the name are unknown."

A more modern etymology is that advocated by Gordon M. Day in 1968, who elaborates upon an earlier etymology given by Charles Arnaud in 1880. Arnaud had claimed that the word came from Montagnais irnokué, meaning "terrible man", via the reduced form irokue. Day proposes a hypothetical Montagnais phrase irno kwédač, meaning "a man, an Iroquois", as the origin of this term. For the first element irno, Day cites cognates from other attested Montagnais dialects: irinou, iriniȣ, and ilnu; and for the second element kwédač he suggests a relation to kouetakiou, kȣetat-chiȣin, and goéṭètjg— names used by neighboring Algonquian tribes to refer to the Iroquois, Hurons, and Laurentians.

More recently, Peter Bakker has proposed a Basque origin for "Iroquois". Basque fishermen and whalers are known to have frequented the waters of Canada in the 1500s, so much so that a Basque-based pidgin developed for communication among the Algonquian tribes and Europeans of the region. Bakker claims that it is unlikely that "-quois" derives from a root specifically used to refer to the Iroquois, citing as evidence that several other Indian tribes of the region were known to the French by names terminating in the same element, e.g. "Armouchiquois", "Charioquois", "Excomminquois", and "Souriquois". He proposes instead that the word derives from hilokoa (via the intermediate form irokoa), from the Basque roots hil "to kill", ko (the locative genitive suffix), and a (the definite article suffix). In favor of an original form beginning with /h/, Bakker cites alternate spellings such as "hyroquois" sometimes found in documents from the period, and the fact that in the Southern dialect of Basque the word hil is pronounced il. The consonant /l/ was rendered as /r/ since the former is not attested in the phonemic inventory of any language in the region (including Maliseet, which developed an /l/ later). Thus the word according to Bakker is translatable as "the killer people," and is similar to other terms used by Eastern Algonquian tribes to refer to the Iroquois which translate as "murderers".

A different term, Haudenosaunee, is the designation more commonly used by the Iroquois to refer to themselves. It is also occasionally preferred by scholars of Native American history who consider the name "Iroquois" to be derogatory in origin. This name derives from two phonetically-similar but etymologically-distinct words in the Seneca language: Hodínöhšö:ni:h, meaning "those of the extended house," and Hodínöhsö:ni:h, meaning "house builders". The word "Haudenosaunee" first appears in English in Lewis Henry Morgan (1851), where it is spelled Ho-de´-no-sau-nee, although the spelling "Hotinnonsionni" is also attested from later in the nineteenth century. An alternate designation, Ganonsyoni, is occasionally used as well. This term derives from the Mohawk kanǫhsyǫ́·ni ("the extended house"), or from a cognate expression is a related Iroquoian language, and is frequently encountered in earlier sources variously spelled "Kanosoni", "akwanoschioni", "Aquanuschioni", "Cannassoone", "Canossoone", "Ke-nunctioni", or "Konossioni".