squaw
The word squaw [ skwɔː ] is the word for " woman " in the now extinct Eastern Algonquin languages of New England . It was borrowed from the Massachusett language into English in the 17th century and today denotes an Indian woman there.
Word stem in Algonquian languages
The root word (reconstructed original Algonquin * eθkweːwa ) occurs in practically all Algonquin languages with the original meaning "woman". So it says in Massachusett squá (ussqua, eshqua) , in Narragansett squaw (eskwa) , in Cree iskwēw , in the Lenape languages xkwē (əxkwew) , in Shawnee ekwēwa and in Ojibwe ikwe , in Cheyenne on the other hand hee (he'eo ') o) .
Racist connotation of the loan word
In the mid-1990s, a campaign, soon supported by many Indian associations , arose , which declared the word a racist swear word ( ethnophaulism ) and called for it to be banned from common parlance and for the numerous places in the USA that contain the word to be renamed . The campaign was based on the claim that the word was derived from the Iroquois term for vagina (such as Mohawk ojiskwa ). Although this etymology is scientifically untenable, place names have actually changed in Minnesota and Arizona.
Another version says that the word "squaw" was repurposed by the whites into a dirty word for the Indian women of white settlers. Due to the lack of women in the border areas in the west, such partnerships often took place.
literature
- William Bright: The Sociolinguistics of the "S-Word": Squaw in American Placenames . In: Names 48, 2000. pp. 207-216.
- Nancy J. Parezo, Angelina R. Jones: What's in a Name? The 1940s – 1950s “Squaw Dress” (PDF; 1.3 MB). American Indian Quarterly, Summer 2009, Vol. 33, No. 3.
Individual evidence
- ^ Frederick Webb Hodge: Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico . Washington DC 1910. Smithsonian Institution Bureau of Ethnology Bulletin 30.
- ^ Anatoly Liberman : Around Ethnic Slurs. Part 1: Squaw (Post on his blog, The Oxford Etymologist , July 8, 2009.)
- ↑ Ulrich van der Heyden (editor): Indian lexicon: on the history and present of the natives of North America. VMA-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1996, ISBN 3-928127-34-9 , p. 305.
