Mi'kmaq People - Etymology

Etymology

The ethnonym has traditionally been spelled Micmac in English, but the natives have used different spellings: Mi’kmaq (singular Mi’kmaw) by the Míkmaq of Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, Miigmaq (Miigmao) by the Míkmaq of New Brunswick, Mi’gmaq by the Listuguj Council in Quebec, or Mìgmaq (Mìgmaw) in some native literature. Until the 1980s, "Micmac" remained the most common spelling in English.

Although still used, for example, in Ethnologue, this spelling has fallen out of favour in recent years. Most scholarly publications use the preferred native spelling of Mi'kmaq, as the spelling Micmac is now considered to be "colonially tainted". The Míkmaq prefer to use one of the three current Míkmaq orthographies when writing the language.

Lnu (the adjectival and singular noun, previously spelled "L'nu"; the plural is Lnúk, Lnu’k, Lnu’g, or Lnùg) is the self-recognized term for the Míkmaq of New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Quebec and Maine, meaning "human being" or "the people".

Various explanations exist for the origin of the term Míkmaq. The Mi'kmaw Resource Guide states that "Míkmaq" means "the family":

The definite article "the" suggests that "Mi'kmaq" is the undeclined form indicated by the initial letter "m". When declined in the singular it reduces to the following forms: nikmaq - my family; kikmaq - your family; wikma - his/her family. The variant form Mi'kmaw plays two grammatical roles: 1) It is the singular of Mi'kmaq and 2) it is an adjective in circumstances where it precedes a noun (e.g. mi'kmaw people, mi'kmaw treaties, mi'kmaw person, etc.)

However, there are other hypotheses:

The name "Micmac" was first recorded in a memoir by de La Chesnaye in 1676. Professor Ganong in a footnote to the word megamingo (earth), as used by Marc Lescarbot, remarked "that it is altogether probable that in this word lies the origin of the name Micmac." As suggested in this paper on the customs and beliefs of the Micmacs, it would seem that megumaagee the name used by the Micmacs, or the Megumawaach, as they called themselves, for their land, is from the words megwaak, "red", and magumegek, "on the earth", or as Rand recorded, "red on the earth," megakumegek, "red ground," "red earth." The Micmacs, then, must have thought of themselves as the Red Earth People, or the People of the Red Earth. Others seeking a meaning for the word Micmac have suggested that it is from nigumaach, my brother, my friend, a word that was also used as a term of endearment by a husband for his wife... Still another explanation for the word Micmac suggested by Stansbury Hagar in "Micmac Magic and Medicine" is that the word megumawaach is from megumoowesoo, the name of the Micmacs' legendary master magicians, from whom the earliest Micmac wizards are said to have received their power.

Members of the Mi'kmaq First Nation historically referred to themselves as Lnu, but used the term níkmaq (my kin) as a greeting. The French initially referred to the Míkmaq as Souriquois" and later as Gaspesiens or (through English) "Mickmakis". The British originally referred to them as Tarrantines.