16 GEOGRAPHIC DICTIONARY OF ALASKA. [bull.187. 



rivers, lakes, etc. But this is attended with difficulty, as everyone 

 who has ti-i('<l knows. Dealino- with tril)es whose language is strange 

 and often wholly uiikiiow'n, the strange sounds are often imperfectly 

 understood and the application of the name is uncertain. Hence, as 

 a rule, no nati\e name is preserved, but rather some faint imitation 

 or corruption of it. Potomac, Kalamazoo, Massachusetts, and Missis- 

 sippi are accepted as Indian words, but it is very doubtful whether 

 anv Indian past or present would recognize these as words of his native 

 tongue. 



A large i)art of the Alaskan native names which, up to a few years 

 back, had a})i)ear(^d on our maps were gathered by the Russians, and 

 these names, when independently gathered and published, differ from 

 one another more or less, as we should expect them to do. Again, 

 these names in Russian characters have been transliterated into Roman 

 characters by persons unskilled in Russian, and this has served to 

 produce yet wider divergence and some extraordinary and unpro- 

 nounceable forms. 



The native names as a whole fall into two great groups : (a) The 

 Eskimo, covering the Arctic coast, the eastern shore of Bering sea, 

 extending some distance up the various rivers, the Aleutian islands, 

 and Alaska peninsula as far east as Kodiak ; and (i^) the Indian tribes 

 of the interior and of southeastern Alaska. 



PRINCIPLES EMPLOYED AND REFORMS ATTEMPTED. 



The general principles followed are those adopted by the Board on 

 Geographic Names and published in its reports, viz: 



(ffl) The avoidance, so far as seems practicable, of the possessive form of names. 



(h) The dropping of the final /; in burgh. 



(c) The spelling of the word center as here given. 



{d) The discontinuance of the use of hyphens in connecting parts of names. 



(c) The simplification of names consisting of more than one word by their co-iibi- 

 nation into one word. 



(/) The avoidance of the use of diacritic characters. 



(g) The drojjjiing f)f the words city and town as parts of names. 



(h) The uniform rendering of the Russian termination obl by of, not off", ov, 

 nor OIL'. 



In addition to following the foregoing principles, certain reforms 

 have been herein attempted with reference to some native names. 

 One of the most noteworthy is the omission of the generic parts of 

 such names. The Eskimo termination vilut, or viut^ or mute, meaning 

 people, is found with wearisome frequency in those parts of Alaska 

 occupied by the Eskimo. Unless local usage or euphony required its 

 retention this termination has been omitted. For example, an Eskimo 

 village on an island in the Kuskokwim has been written Kikkhtaga- 

 mute, Kik-Khtagamute, and Kikikhtagamiut, meaning Big island 

 people. Kikhtak (whence by corruption Kodiak) means a big island. 



