animate objects
cannot receive this affix. 'At the rock' (_ompsk-ut_), 'at the
mountain' (_wadchu-ut_), or 'in the country' (_ohk-it_, _auk-it_), is
intelligible, in Indian or English; 'at the deer,' 'at the bear,' or
'at the sturgeons,' would be nonsense in any language. When animate
nouns occur in place-names, they receive the formative of verbals, or
serve as adjectival prefixes to some localizing ground-word or
noun-generic.

[Footnote 99: Abnaki and Cree, _-k_ or _-g_,--Delaware and Chippewa,
_-ng_; or _-[n]g_,--with a connecting vowel.]

8. Finally,--in the analysis of geographical names, differences of
_language_ and _dialect_ must not be disregarded. In determining the
primary meaning of roots, great assistance may be had by the
comparison of derivatives in nearly related languages of the same
stock. But in American languages, the diversity of dialects is even
more remarkable than the identity and constancy of roots. Every tribe,
almost every village had its peculiarities of speech. Names
etymologically identical might have widely different meanings in two
languages, or even in two nations speaking substantially the same
language. The eastern Algonkin generic name for 'fish' (_nama-us_,
Del. _namai-s_) is restricted by northern and western tribes to a
single species, the sturgeon (Chip. _namai'_,) as _the_ fish, par
excellence. _Attuk_, in Massachusetts was the common fallow-deer,--in
Canada and the north-west the caribou or reindeer. The Abnaki Indian
called his _dog_ (_atie_) by a name which the Chippewa gives his
_horse_ (_oti-un_; _n'di_, my horse).[100] The most common
noun-generic of river names in New England (_-tuk_, 'tidal river')
occurs rarely in those of Pennsylvania and Virginia, where it is
replaced by _-hanne_ ('rapid stream'), and is unknown to western
Algonkin tribes whose streams are undisturbed by tides. The analysis
of a geographical name must be sought in the language spoken by the
name-givers. The correct translation of a Connecticut or Narragansett
name is not likely to be attained by searching for its several
components in a Chippewa vocabulary; or of the name of a locality near
Hudson's River, by deriving its prefix from an Abnaki adverb and its
ground-word from a Chippewa participle,--as was actually done in a
recently published list of Indian names.

[Footnote 100: Both words have the same meaning,--that of 'a domestic
animal,' or literally, 'animate property;' 'he who _belongs_ to