I was recently flipping through my Merriam Webster’s Geographical Dictionary (as one does), and at the top of p. 534 I was thunderstruck by the entry beginning “Ishawooa Pass \ꞌi-shə-wä\” (i.e., /ˈɪʃəwa/). Could that be right? So I did some googling and found this video, where seven seconds in we hear “up the Ishawooa trail” with the final vowel more like a schwa (natural for words of that phonetic shape) but otherwise as advertised. Not a trace of anything that might be represented by the -oo-. Trying to find out more, I did some more googling and found this page, which gives some history:
Town in Big Horn County, Wyoming. An Indian word meaning “much cascara.” (Gannett, 1905) “Ishawooa was named by Capt. Belknap. He wanted something different, and took this Indian name. I do not know what it means. It isn’t ‘Ishawood’ nor ‘Ishawoa,’ but is ‘ISHAW-OOA.’ (Rollinson, 1948)
As incoherent as that is, it’s better than nothing; “cascara” is presumably this. And that page led me to Wyoming Places, which “provides information about locations, histories, and name origins of places in the great state of Wyoming.” I like sites like that (cf. Colorado Place Names from earlier this year); local pronunciations are a longstanding interest of this blog, starting less than six months into its existence.
But cascara doesn’t grow anywhere close to Wyoming; and the state site you linked to has Belknap’s own 1873 diary entry stating that “Ish-a-woo-a” was named after a pillar-shaped rock formation which the Indians used as a landmark to identify this river (aka South Fork Stinking Water).
The river seems to be called South Fork Shoshone now, renamed by popular request in 1901, and the name Ishawooa stuck to one of its main tributaries…
The 1873 diary is by William A Jones, not Henry Belknap; I surmise Rollinson, 1948 was mistaken.
Right, I didn’t check the authorship. His guides I assume, must have been Shoshone?
And from that William A Jones article I got to Togwotee Pass, with the unlikely pronunciation “TOH-guh-tee.”
His guides I assume, must have been Shoshone?
The previous day, 25 July:
Mae Urbanek’s Wyoming Place Names says, ‘a Shoshone name meaning “lying warm”’. However, Park County, from the generally well-researched and always enjoyable Images of America series, says, ‘[William] Jones took the name from his Shoshone guides, Moonharvy, Charlie and Bob. Ishawooa means the “wolf’s penis” and identifies a rock formation along the South Fork now named Castle Rock. The Ishawooa Mountains, below, retain the name. Later citizens offered a more polite definition of the place name, “where the cold water meets the warm water.”’
The pronunciation is given at the same paragraphs as “ish-ah-wha”.
Poking around the Shoshoni dictionary hints that it might mean “coyote’s penis”, but I haven’t cross-compared all the dialectal variants plus the origin of Jones’s informants in order to assemble a coherent story. wooa plausibly reflects [wɨa].
Whoa. The dictionary is a strong hint. Although lingua Shoshone non penis canina
https://www.flickr.com/photos/wyojones/5617513021
I was interested by the possible use of the name ‘Coyote’s Penis’ for other mountains/buttes in the region… For instance, on p. 252 in this ethnogeography of the Wind River Shoshone, the form i´šawë’ (with ’ indicating gemination of the initial consonant of a following element, I believe) is given as the Eastern Shoshone name of Washakie Needles. Were any other starkly prominent features jutting above the surrounding terrain given the same name?
I wonder if the name “Coyote’s Penis” is a (perhaps joking?) reference to myth… Apparently the figure of Coyote in Shoshone myth possesses a long, detachable penis of considerable size that can operate independently of his body, as for example in the following myth given in Jon P. Dayley (1989) Tümpisa (Panamint) Shoshone Grammar, p. 463ff, in which Coyote’s ‘Sky Penis’ (tukuwüappüh: tukun ‘straight up, directly above’ + wüaʺ ‘penis’ + -püh, absolutive suffix) is active, and which apparently explains the distribution of piñon pines across the region:
Man, I thought Norse myths and sagas were brutal…
It seems that “Coyote’s penis” is a popular term for volcanic plugs everywhere around there.
In Christiansen-Bolli’s Tadaksahak grammar, one of the two glossed texts at the end is a pleasant little folktale that starts with Hyena setting up shop as a boarding school teacher, eating up all the kids entrusted to him except one who he keeps around to tell his father goat everything is alright, then eating him too, fooling the elephant into killing the father, then fooling the elephant into drinking some boiling water that drives him mad with pain and makes him trample all the other animals in the whole region, so Hyena can eat everyone’s carcasses. I guess at least one character gets a happy ending.
a long, detachable penis of considerable size that can operate independently of his body
How odd. I occasionally have dreams with that plot element, minus the size feature. In the dream I worry a little whether it will fit back on and stay put, physiologically speaking. I don’t know if someone is trying to tell me something, but whatever it might be, it’s now too late to make any difference.
I occasionally have dreams with that plot element
This has been explained by Freud. Such dreams reflect the fear of losing one’s teeth as one grows older.
Well, I have lost almost all of them over the years (I still have two that I can chew with), and gave nary a thought to the matter until it was too late. Looks like Freud confused fear and regret.
Is this “fear of losing one’s teeth” a metaphor for fear of impotence ? Dreams are animated metaphors, they say, so the detached plot element would be a dream of a dream. I think the Censor has been smoking too much weed.
Not at all. Impotence is a metaphor for losing one’s teeth.
I looked at the Tadakshak story. Cheerful as promised, but Lameen, I think you misremembered some details. The naughty scamp is Jackal, not Hyena; the father is Warthog; and after he is killed, the animals render his carcass and the elephant drinks the hot grease, not boiling water. This makes the story even more hilarious.
When Freud seems to be talking about sex, it’s always a sublimated form of talking about dentistry. Not understanding this has led to much confusion.
This cross-cultural semiotic theme was the topic of a novelty/”alternative” rock semi-hit (with spoken-word narrative) from circa 1993, which I enjoy mostly for the nostalgic setting of a onetime version of the East Village that no longer exists in the same mode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byDiILrNbM4
Ah, 1992, back when the p-word was subversive. Then, a year later, came the Bobbitts, and as Joel Achenbach wrote (“A Stitch in Time”),
I’m sure Achenbach was pleased with himself.
Yeah, probably – for people who think in metaphors a lot. So… most people, but not me. My dreams spell things out.
Sometimes a detachable second sky penis is just a detachable second sky penis.
ishawooa
What about Christopher Isherwood, whose name was pronounced by his Berlin landlady as “ishyvoo”.
I remember another folktale about Coyote and his giant detachable penis:
Coyote wants to pick up some sky maidens to have sex with, but he’s afraid they will be spooked by the size of his penis, so he leaves it with Squirrel. Coyote finds a sky maiden and goes back to retrieve his penis, but Squirrel has disappeared with it. It turns out that two more sky maidens wandered by and were very impressed with the penis, so Squirrel went off and had sex with both of them with it. By the time Squirrel gets back and returns the penis, the girl Coyote picked up has lost interest. He is naturally very angry with Squirrel, but after Squirrel tells Coyote about all the hot sex, Coyote grows very proud of his penis and enjoys the story of the sex almost as much as he would have enjoyed having it.
All I wanted was a pronunciation of ISHAWOOA
NOT A STORY OF WIERDNESS IF IT IS A SHOSHONE WORD JUST PRONOUNCE IT , FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO GET IT CORRECT PLEASE &TY & GOD BLESS Y’ALL
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
(I did not know that meme, being a Brit/NZer. So I’ve learnt something. There was allegedly a Wendy’s in Christchurch that got ‘munted’ by the earthquakes 2010. There’s allegedly another still in the suburbs. Never eaten at either — if ‘eating’ is the appropriate verb.)
As terrible “food” goes, they are subpar. However, if you are restricted by your health to eat only square-shaped hamburgers, they are your only option.
When I was a kid I considered Wendy’s far superior to McDonald’s or Burger King, but I haven’t eaten at any of them for decades.
I ate at a McDonald’s once. I don’t think we have Wendyses. I don’t remember seeing one.
I drank tea there at a McDonald’s once. The idea to serve hot drinks in cardboard cups greatly surprised me.
The tea tasted exactly as the cardboard dissolved in it – perhaps only at its edge, as you’re sipping, but nevertheless. It was simply.. hm. I mean, it was not as much “bad” as … it is like selling water in vessels with holes in the bottom. No one needs tea that tastes as cardboard.
I think now they (like eveyone) have plastic. Also I don’t understand why eateries that sell cups of tea for the price of a hundred tea bags won’t try more expensive and tastier brands of tea bags and frequently chose some random cheap brand which is neither strong nor tasty. Especially true for McDonalds.
But I sincerely believe those of my friends who like their food that there are people who like their food.
When I was a kid I considered Wendy’s far superior to McDonald’s or Burger King, but I haven’t eaten at any of them for decades.
I had the same reaction back in the ’80s, but that was a long time ago. I never patronized McD’s for anything but their coffee and, on occasion, the Egg McMuffin.
@LH, were cardboard cups for coffee normal?
In USSR everything was served in glass or porcelain everywhere (including the machines that sold soda water and street kvas vendors with large пузатые (paunchy?) mugs and… small пузатые mugs)
Now evertyhign is sold in plastic. I’m not sure if those cups reflected our status fo a “developing” country (that is economic hardships) or were then Western fashion. I still wonder what it was. Were those cups simply poorly made or is the taste of coffee (as opposed to tea) so strong that no one notices the taste of wet cardboard? It was a powerful impression, to put it mildly – clearly owners never ever tried their tea.
were cardboard cups for coffee normal?
Cardboard (waxed) cups for takeaway coffee are normal in NZ, because we’re trying to avoid plastic waste. China cups/glasses are normal for dining in. During the pandemic/with some level of easing, it was common to take everything in disposable ware, to minimise risk of contamination.
The wax means the cardboard doesn’t get wet/doesn’t taste.
in the u.s., there’s a fairly consistent but rarely explicit pattern of which beverages get which kinds of disposable cups: “hot cups” (heavier cardboard, with a firmly affixed coating) are for tea/coffee/hot chocolate; “cold cups” (thinner cardboard, with a wax coating that often flakes off) are mainly for water/juice; plastic cups (including the red pint/16oz ones called “solo cups” after a pioneering manufacturer) are usually reserved for carbonated drinks or alcoholic drinks. styrofoam used to be fairly common in all these roles, but isn’t seen as often these days.
… and thin, clear plastic cups for iced coffee.
Linguistically, disposable drinking vessels are always cups, not glasses.
Up to a certain age I drank tea from a piyala (пиала – a bowl-shaped cup from the Persianate world). So eveything was simple: your cup, her cup, his cup, their cups, my piyala.
Linguistically, disposable drinking vessels are always cups, not glasses.
Norw. plastglass “disposable plastic drinking vessel in the shape of a glass”. Usually they crack already when you’re drinking from them, but we had a set of plastic wine glasses for many years.
Come to think of it, we still have (and occasionally use) a set of disposable plastic cutlery that my wife bought when she did a school project in Italy in 91 or so, before we met.
There are two genres: ones with thin walls (in cafeteria etc.) and ones with transparent thicker walls.
(And I guess you still can’t stemware “cups” in English)
In Russian it is “paper/plastic glass.DIM”
But “a glass” (and “glasses”) is not based on the word for material.
It is stakan from dostakan form a Persian word which weirdly means “sweatheart”.
Has been reborrowed into Persian:)
The Arabic entry in Wiktionary is distinct from the Persian entry, and the Arabic version of Wiktionary explains the pronunciation of the Iraqi Arabic word thusly:
الاِسْتِكَان [East Tea Can]
https://ar.wiktionary.org/wiki/اِسْتِكَان
PS they think we’re Orientals! ;-((
The thicker one is what you get on airplanes for water or juice. Now that I think about it, I would call those a glass.
The ones for iced coffee are tall and are easily crushed by hand. I would only call those a cup.
I think canonical version of languagehat’s meme is: “Sir, this is an Arby’s.” (If greater specificity is needed, it may mean the flagship giant Arby’s in Arlington Heights.)
So it is! Once again, I learn vital information at the Hattery.
In Germany, disposable cups, whether made of cardboard or plastic, are called Becher; it’s the same word that’s used for mugs. A Becher can also be a non-disposable container (generally for drinking) made of plastic, wood, metal, ceramic, as long as it is higher than wide; if it’s made of glass, you call it Glas.
@drasvi: I don’t know whether non-disposable cups or glasses were ever used with automats in the West; in any case, they weren’t in Germany since I can remember (so since the 70s). I was very surprised seeing re-usable glasses being used when I came to the USSR in the early 90s; it seemed a bit unhygienic to me.
In the US “beaker” is used only for laboratory glassware, and maybe in archaeology, but I think elsewhere it’s used for some drinking vessels.
I just learned of the existence of the spectacular volcanic plug called Pico Cão Grande on São Tomé. I wonder what the reason for the name is.
Danish bæger doesn’t have a handle and may have a stem. Ceramic with a handle will be kop or krus. Egg cups are æggebægre, for instance.
Take-away cardboard ones will be bægre if wider than tall (ice cream) or krus otherwise (coffee, regardless of the presence of naff little foldable ears). I’m not quite sure what the lab ones are called.
Danish WP tells me they are bægerglas, which sounds plausible. I’d accept glasbæger too, but I’m not a lab assistant.
Pico Cão Grande on São Tomé
There’s also a Cão Pequeno. Could it be a folk etymology of Caué, the name of district they are in?
Danish bæger doesn’t have a handle and may have a stem.
German Becher can have a stem, too; handles are possible, but optional. A lab beaker is a Messbecher.
@Hans, yeah, målebæger if it has those millilitre gradations on the side. That would be a decilitermål in a kitchen, and probably not made from glass. If it doesn’t (just for reactions with one of those spinny magnets) I don’t think it merits the name.
The kitchen version is also called Messbecher in German.