Tikaani
Now that our department’s symposium and poster session are over, I have a bit more time to post so I’ll be doing some catching up.
This post isn’t really going to be about linguistics, but I’ve noticed a trend with my blog visitors and want to discuss it a bit. You see, about 1 in 10 hits to my blog for the past three months have been people looking for the word tikaani ‘wolf’. Apparently it’s a very popular dog name and people want to know how to pronounce it. Also, most people think it’s an Eskimo word, but it isn’t. Sorry to burst your bubble.
One more time for emphasis: tikaani is not an Eskimo word. It’s from Ahtna, one of the Native American languages of Alaska. If it were (Central Alaskan) Yup’ik Eskimo, for example, it would be kegluneq. If it were Iñupiaq Eskimo, it would be amaġuq.
Putting tikaani aside, a lot of hits to this blog come from people searching for dog names. What is it that makes people want Alaskan and/or Eskimo names for their dogs? (Judging from this page at the Alaska Native Language Center, they get asked about dog names a lot, too.) Sure, they might be huskies, but so what? I don’t see people naming their German Shepherds Helmut or Fritz just because the breed is German.
James Crippen said,
April 5, 2008 at 1:38 pm
I got asked once for dog names in Tlingit. My interlocutor was disappointed: keitl is “dog”, and ghooch is wolf. Both are monosyllabic, include obscure consonants, and sound “boring”. A Tlingit speaker would be incredulous if you named your dog ghooch, they’d say “but it isn’t a wolf, it’s a dog, so why would you call it a wolf?”. Calling your dog keitl would be equally odd, they’d say “doesn’t it have a name?”.
Tlingit actually has a sort of genre for dog names which are different from human names. Often they are deprecatory, but sometimes not. Interestingly, people can gain teknonyms from their pets, so a guy with a dog named Chánk’ “Little Stink” (chán-k’ |stink-DIM|) might get named Chánk’ Éesh “Little Stink’s Father”. The reverse is possible too, where a person with a teknonym gives the source name to the pet, thus Dáanaa Tlaa “Dollar Mother” might name her dog Dáanaa.
Claire said,
April 9, 2008 at 6:20 pm
iila is dog in Bardi, and dingo is goorridi. But my real favourite is the Yan-nhaŋu ‘alternative’ word for dog, which is bodji /pu:ɟi/, from English ‘pussy (cat)’. The regular word is waṯu, but bodji is used quite a bit too.
amaguq (wolf) said,
January 13, 2009 at 8:01 pm
how do you say the word amaguq for wolf
TwoYaks said,
August 12, 2009 at 2:56 pm
I couldn’t help but notice that ANCL suggested negiliq for a name. Someone must have let Walkie at the department pick that one, because it makes me think of what it’d be like naming a horse ‘Glue.’ :p
Maeg said,
August 13, 2009 at 12:38 pm
personally I wanted the pronunciation for Tikaani because my chihuahua looks like a wolf in the face with light grey and white hair with a dark gray stripe down its face and around it’s eyes and blue eyes. It reminded me of a husky and wolf so I wanted an alaskan name that meant wolf and I loved the pronunciation of the name after I found it.