The Name
Edward Sapir originally constructed the term Na-Dene to refer to a combined family of Athabaskan, Tlingit, and Haida. (The existence of Eyak was not known at the time.) In his "The Na-Dene languages: A preliminary report", he describes how he arrived at the term (Sapir 1915, p. 558):
The name that I have chosen for the stock, Na-dene, may be justified by reference to no. 51 of the comparative vocabulary. Dene, in various dialectic forms, is a wide-spread Athabaskan term for "person, people"; the element *-ne (*-n, *-η) which forms part of it is an old stem for "person, people" which, as suffix or prefix, is frequently used in Athabaskan in that sense. It is cognate with H. na "to dwell; house" and Tl. na "people". The compound term Na-dene thus designates by means of native stems the speakers of the three languages concerned, besides continuing the use of the old term Dene for the Athabaskan branch of the stock.Read more about this topic: Na-Dene Languages
Famous quotes related to the name:
“There is a river in Macedon, and there is moreover a river in Monmouth. It is called Wye at Monmouth, but it is out of my prains what is the name of the other river; but ‘tis all one, ‘tis alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)