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RSRICHMOND at aol_com: Re: NANFA-- squawfish
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From: RSRICHMOND at aol_com
To: nanfa at aquaria_net
Subject: Re: NANFA-- squawfish
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 15:55:19 -0500 (EST)
Message-ID: <971111155518_1137747406 at mrin51_mail.aol.com>
Interesting language problem here.
> I thought about the situation of the squawfish in my part of the
country.
This fish is a piscivore which eats Columbia River salmon smolts as they
migrate downstream.<
Would someone look up whether "squawfish" is the currently accepted
Bureau of
Fisheries common name for this fish (also what's its scientific name, for
us
easterners)?
The word "squaw" denoting a female Native American is extremely offensive
to
many native Americans. (Rather like the Texas coneflower, a species of
Echinacia unknown to alternative medicine, which my sainted sixth grade
teacher taught me to call "niggerhead" in 1950.)
The word is supposed to be a shortened form of something like
"sunkasquaw", a
word in a New England or Middle Atlantic Algonkian language, and the
original
word may have been an honorific at one time. (I can probably get more
information on this point from a couple of online Algonkianists I know.)
But this fish probably needs a new common name, if it hasn't already got
one.
Bob Richmond
Knoxville TN
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