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Personal Names of Indians of New Jersey
In the following pages about six hundred and fifty personal names are given,
not counting repetitions. These are practically all additions to the
vocabularies above mentioned, and so form a very material extension of our
knowledge of the Lenni-Lenape language.
Moreover, Indian personal names were usually combinations of nominal, pronominal
and adjectival themes, so that this list is calculated to throw much light on
the habits of thought, the mental characteristics, the structure of their
language and the environments of the aborigines.
The student of the origin of language will be interested to notice that certain
sounds are almost never used in beginning personal names.
The frequency of the letters of the English alphabet in beginning the names
hereinafter given appears by the following table. The third column shows the
frequency of the several letters, taken from a list of 15,800 names of white
inhabitants of New Jersey, 1670-1730. Dividing this number by 26 we have 600
such persons, the same number as of the aborigines named. The comparison is
therefore based on an equal number of names of Indians and whites, and
approximately the same period. Read more...
Other Resources:
Pennsylvania Indian Names
Notes about the Book:
Source: Personal Names Of Indians Of New
Jersey, By William Nelson, 1904, The
Paterson History Club, Paterson, N. J.
Online Publication: The manuscript was
scanned and then ocr'd. Minimal editing has
been done and readers can and should expect
some errors in the textual output. Symbols
used in many cases were the closest we could
find to the written page. Many (-)
were used in names and caused by line
brakes, these were joined together.
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