Sipiy(Algonkian)= River (English) Aboriginal Root in North American Place Names at Bill Casselman's Canadian Word of the Day

“riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s…” So begins James Joyce’s punny metanovel Finnegans Wake. Although Joyce’s opening sentence refers to the River Liffey on its watery, lilting course through Dublin, the initial five words also reference a stark fact of human survival. Where we could, humans have lived near rivers. Place names in all the world’s languages reflect this fluvial adjacency.

The aboriginal languages of North America have a practical toponymy; their place names mean something locative and useful. We have inherited some of these names and will examine one Algonkian (or Algonquian) word, sipiy ‘river’ as it appears in surviving Canadian and American toponyms.

Mississippi, Michigan, Temagami, Mississauga

Of these, the most famous is Mississipi ‘big river.’ Compare Ojibwa misi ‘big’ + sipi ‘river.’ The root meaning big has reflexes of minor variance throughout the many individual languages of the Algonkian group, forms like mici, meici, mitchi and michi, hence the state of Michigan named after the lake. Lake Michigan takes it name from a Chippewan word meicigama that means ‘big lake,’ akin to Fox meikami ‘large lake.’ Many other Canadian and northern American place names contain the roots. Ontarians will know Temagami ‘deep lake,’ a geographical name that contains an Algonkian root some of whose forms are gam-, kam-, –gan or kan ‘lake.’ Residents of Toronto will know the city of Mississauga, named after an Ojibwa people who took their tribal name from a river in the Algoma country of northern Ontario, a river that emptied into Lake Huron and a river that had a relatively ‘big delta’ or ‘big outlet’ from Ojibwa misi ‘big + saug ‘delta, outlet.’

Algonkian Words in English

Algonkian is the largest family of languages native to North America. Before the European invasion, Algonkian languages like Ojibwa and Cree were spoken in what is now the eastern U.S., the southern half of Canada and parts of the western U.S.A.

Algonkian-speaking peoples were often the first native peoples that English and French speakers met in North America; consequently a large number of Algonkian words have entered French and English. The English often adopted Algonkian words to refer to things that they had never seen before. Many Algonkian words entered English: moose, skunk, chipmunk, raccoon, possum, persimmon, squash, hominy, squaw, papoose, wigwam, powwow, moccasin, wampum, tomahawk, woodchuck and toboggan. Some of the most important languages in this family are Cree, Ojibwa or Chippewa, Blackfoot and Lenape or Delaware.

The Hayes River as a Name? Yech!

In the Canadian contest between English and French place names on the one hand and aboriginal names on the other, common sense and historical inevitability (an admittedly dangerous phrase with a Nazi reek) dictate some of both. But, when one examines the earthy pragmatic monikers given to our places, native names often seem preferable. Consider the Hayes River, one of the longest rivers in Manitoba, still along most of its pristine northeasterly course flowing as it did hundreds of years ago, across the Canadian Shield’s boreal forest and then, as it reaches the great Bay, through boggy Hudsonian muskeg. For almost 200 years the Hayes River was the chief canoe route for fur traders between Lake Winnipeg from whose northern shore the river begins and York Factory.

The Hayes River was named after Sir James Hayes, one of the founding British moneybags of the Hudson’s Bay Company. How much, one wonders, of Sir James’ swag of obscene pelf was stolen from natives and starveling voyageurs? Most of it, I think. Today how many Canadians remember this puffed-up pustule of English rapacity? Close to zero. I had to look him up. So the river name is not only meaningless but also possibly repellent. The local Swampy Cree people had and have a dynamic tag for the Hayes river. Through some of its course, the Hayes bears a dark leaden hue, even its riparian mudbanks flaunting a blue-black colour. Its Cree name is Apihtisipiy ‘the bruised river.’ Wonderful naming! Such a label clearly designates a natural feature of the waterway. It does not celebrate a foreign, defunct robber baron of dubious morality.

Canada’s map yawns and groans with mosquito-like flurries of these Waspy, bureaucratic ‘I'm-rich-so-you'll-name-it-after-me’ place names. Why should we draw our place names from an historical thieves’ den like the Hudson’s Bay Company? Should we dull further the cartographical expanses of Canadian mappery, bland as most of it already is with boring place names. Did you know that Queen Victoria’s name appears more than 300 times on Canadian maps? Give us a break!

Have we Canadians not done with the nasoanal currying of favour? Do you want another 200 years of Canadians stooping down to lick the toe jam of subservience from blood-stained British toes? I don’t think so. I suggest we change many of the more tedious and disagreeable place names on our map and make them true Canadian place names.

More Sipiy Place Names

• Mistassibi River, Québec, is a reflex of the same roots that appear in Mississipi, but these are in the Montagnais language (an Algonkian tongue), mista ‘big + sibi ‘river.’

• The Manto Sipi Cree Nation in Manitoba take their name from a river. Manitou ‘God, spirit’ + sipi ‘river.’

• Carrot River, Saskatchewan is a translation of its Cree name oskatask sipiy = oskatask Cree ‘wild carrot’ + sipi ‘river.’

• The Ochichakkosipi First Nation take their name from a river.

o-chi-chak-ko ‘crane’ + sipi ‘river.’

• The Ockewi-Sipi first Nation of Manitoba take their name from a river.

ockewi ‘fisher’ + sipi ‘river.’ The fisher referred to here is “fisher… a large dark brown somewhat vulpine arboreal carnivorous mammal (Martes pennanti) that is related to the marten and the weasels and that is native to much of the forested northern half of No. America but is now extinct over much of its former range due to excessive hunting because of its valuable pelt.”

definition from Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002.

• Saskatchewan – The Canadian province took its name from a river. In Cree, the river’s name is Kisiskatchewani Sipi = kisiskat Cree ‘quick’ + chewani ‘flowing’ + sipi ‘river.’ Note how onomatopoeia operates in many languages, including English and Cree. Ki-saskat sounds quick. The sound of the word imitates its meaning. Chewani flows gently as a word for stream or river or current. In this word also, the sound imitates its basic sense, which is what the fancy literary word onomatopoeia means. Examples of English words that are onomatopoeic are bow-wow, cuckoo, buzz, clang, and croak.

And so an ancient Algonkian root persists through time, and a river runs through it.