194 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



examples are wu/7, great ; pok, narrow ; icel, good ; mlU many, etc. 

 Of (2) examples are wops, rock; pet, bend ; med, rapid (?), amk, gravel, 

 and others less common which may be found in the diction ar}'. 



They have no names for large stretches of country and the use of 

 Miramichi, Scoodic, Restigouche for districts is purely European. 



There is often great difficulty in recording Indian words from the 

 fact that for many of their sounds we have no equivalent. Thus a 

 common consonant is one betAveen k and g ; it is not Med-og-teg nor 

 Med-ok-tek but between, not Shik-a-te-haick nor Shig-a-te-haivg but 

 between. Again there is a sound between k and I ; Klun-qua-dik or 

 Tlun-qua-dik, and also between m and h, as Moannes or Boannes. They 

 have also slight extra sounds or lengthening of sounds hardly distinct 

 enough to be given as extra syllables, but too distinct to be neglected ; 

 Kay-(io(it or 2^ay-goo-o(>t . The sounds /• and /are wanting in both Mali- 

 seet and Micmac. 



It is useless to attempt to interpret Indian names from the forms in 

 which they ai"e in use by us. How extremely these difîer from the 

 proper Indian form may be found by consulting the dictionary, and the 

 true form must always be obtained from Indians or from authoritative 

 documents as a preliminaiy to an}^ thorough study. 



The reasons why our forms differ so much from their Indian originals 

 may be briefly traced. They have come mostly through the French, hence 

 suffering two sets of lingual alterations through familiai'ization and 

 shoilening. The French in ado])ting them, regularly altered certain 

 sounds difficult of pronunciation to others more easy or pleasing and 

 misunderstood some others ; and the English have added their set of 

 alterations. The details of the sound changes have not been worked 

 out. but I have no doubt that they are as regular as they have been found 

 to be elsewhere, and they can be expressed in a law as definite as Grimm's 

 is for the Indo-European and German. The shortening of words has 

 been very marked, the Micmac Gool-vah-gdli'-kxcek was to the Fi-ench 

 Ariquaki, later Moqtiaque, now Quaco ; Noo-kam-keech-wuk is now Keswick. 



There are some puzzling cases in which it is difficult to say whether 

 our name is a translation of the Indian or theirs a translation of ours, 

 or whether the two may not be independently given ; thus Spoon Island 

 is in Maliseet Am-quah'-nis, meaning a spoon, and the name seeins to be 

 descriptive of its shape like the bowl of a spoon. In some cases the 

 Indians have adopted the English or French names familiarizing them 

 more or less ; Poos-hetk' for Boars head ; Welshpool; S'college for Sussex 

 (where there was formerl}* an Indian college) ; See-dan for Sainte Anne 

 (see Hart's Island). Trowsers Lake they call Bel-ches-og-a-mook (i.e. 

 breeches lake). Cases like Kchee-men-eek' for Long Island and Kchee-quls- 

 pem for Grand Lake are probably translations of the English names, 

 though possiblj'' they are aboriginal. It is probable that careful study 



