IroquoisIroquois

The story

Attested in American English since the 1660s, from French Iroquois, Hiroquois (attested since the early 1600s). The ultimate origin is uncertain.1uncertain The source flags this step as uncertain. Missionary Charles Arnaud derived it from Montagnais irno-kué (‘terrible people’). Linguist Gordon Day notes that though no form irno "person" is attested, one is plausible (given iriniou and ilnu), but application to a non-Montagnais is unlikely, and kué is too short: the root is kwet-. Day theorizes the awkward phrase may nonetheless have been uttered by some interpreter and used thereafter by the unaware French, or alternatively the Montagnais may have borrowed an Iroquoian autonym whereafter Montagnais folk-etymologizers adapted it to resemble those words; for example, Mohawk i-ih rongwe (‘man’) would have entered Montagnais as /iːrohkwe/.2folk etymology The source marks this as unproven or a folk etymology. Quoted, not asserted. (Some earlier scholars proposed that an Iroquoian term like the Mohawk term was the direct etymon of the French.) Linguist Peter Bakker alternatively proposes that the etymon is a Basque pidgin word (h)ilokoa "killers" (mirroring Algonquian names for the Iroquois), from hil (‘to kill’) and a suffix -koa (‘those of’) which may be the source of some other tribal names ending in -quois.3disputed Scholars disagree here; the competing view is quoted as the source gives it.