Comments on: Tikaani

By: Maeg

Maeg — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:38:18 +0000

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.

By: TwoYaks

TwoYaks — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:56:04 +0000

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

By: amaguq (wolf)

amaguq (wolf) — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 02:01:48 +0000

how do you say the word amaguq for wolf

By: Claire

Claire — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 03:20:32 +0000

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.

By: James Crippen

James Crippen — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 22:38:55 +0000

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.