THE MASKINONGE ; A QUESTION OF PRIORITY IN 

 NOMENCLATURE. 



By E. T. D. Chambers 

 Quebec, Canada 



One of the most prominent members of the American Fisheries 

 Society, the learned Doctor Prince, of Ottawa, in a paper pub- 

 lished by the Dominion Government, some years ago, on "The Ver- 

 nacular Names of Fishes," furnished some interesting illustrations 

 of the diversity of names applied by different people to the same 

 fish. In the course of his article, he said : 



As a rule these early names — Indian or Indio-French names, which thfe 

 early settlers continued to apply to animals, because they were already in 

 use — always more or less accurately describe features in the forms on which 

 they were bestowed. Thus the name maskinonge, commonly, but very 

 erroneously, spelt muskellunge or mascalonge in the United States, is really 

 an Indian name, the Chippewa name for pike being kenosha and the prefix 

 mis or mas means large or great, so that maskenosha or maskinoge (cor- 

 rupted into maskinonge) is really a large, deformed pike. 



In the case of Bsox nobilior, or Lucius masquinongy, whose 

 popular title in its original form, like that of the ouananiche, comes 

 down to us, as correctly claimed by the late Fred Mather, from its 

 Indian nomenclature, an apparent desire to get away from French 

 orthography has produced a somewhat similar confusion of lan- 

 guage to that which so long existed in the case of the ouananiche. 

 The original spelling of the Indian name was undoubtedly "maski- 

 nonge," and such it is officially called in the statutes of Canada, 

 in which country the fish was first known and the name originated. 

 According to Bishop Lafleche, who was a recognized authority upon 

 Indian customs and dialects, and in his early life a devoted mis- 

 sionary to the Northwest, "maskinonge" is derived from mashk 

 (deformed) and kinonje (a pike), and was applied to the Bsox 

 nobilior by the Indians, because it appeared to them a deformed 

 or different kind of pike from that to which they had been accus- 

 tomed. The river of the same name that flows into Lake St. Peter, 

 which name has been extended to the town built at its mouth, and 

 to the county of which it is the chief place, was so called from 

 the number of these fish taken in or near its estuary, and after 

 their Indian name. And it is a singular corroboration of the abso- 



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