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"Bald Eagle" <cre### [at] netscape net> wrote:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee
>
> See "Rejected etymologies"
>
Like JimT, I had some kind of half-formed idea that "Yankee" was based on
American/Canadian Indian lore (or language.) In the "Rejected etymologies", I
atually like this explanation:
"Another theory surmised that the word was borrowed from the Wyandot [Indian]
pronunciation of the French l'anglais, meaning "the Englishman" or "the English
language", which was sounded as Y'an-gee."
If that has any basis in fact, then I imagine that the Wyandot used it in a
perjorative sense from the get-go-- before anyone else! There were some complex
and ugly historical interactions between The Wyandot (or Hurons), the Iroquois,
the French, and the English, in the 17th century. The English *apparently* used
the term first, but I wonder...
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