Posted by Victor Mair
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=69672&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mi-mi-mi
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=69672
[first draft written June 9-10, 2025 in Bemidji, Minnesota, where the famous giant statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox stand next to beautiful Lake Bemidji*]
During my peregrinations in upper midwest USA, I noticed a proliferation of place names beginning with "mi-". Because there are 10,000 big and little glacial lakes up here, I suspected that "mi-" might be a prefix signifying "water"). I had come to Minneapolis to explore the headwaters of the Mississippi in northern Minnesota. That alone was enough of an emphatic prompt to set me off on a linguistic "mi-" quest.
My main intention on this trip is to follow the Mississippi from Lake Itasca, whence it emerges as a small stream about ten feet wide you can walk across on a line of stones in northern Minnesota, to where it debouches into the Gulf in the south. European-American settlers named the Mighty Mississippi after the Ojibwe word ᒥᓯ-ᓰᐱ misi-ziibi ("great river"). (source) Misi zipi is the French rendering of the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe or Algonquin) name for the river. (source)
So I had one strike against me on the first "mi".
The second "mi-" place name, Minneapolis, gave me more hope, but that Greek suffix ensured that the name as a whole was at best half Native American in origin. As a matter of fact, though,
Nicknamed the "City of Lakes", Minneapolis is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks, and waterfalls.
…
In the Dakota language, the city's name is Bde Óta Othúŋwe ('Many Lakes Town').[g] Residents had divergent ideas on names for their community. Charles Hoag proposed combining the Dakota word for 'water' (mni [h]) with the Greek word for 'city' (polis), yielding Minneapolis.
(Wikipedia)
Well, it's still pure "mi-" (actually "mni-) at the beginning.
With bated breath, I turned to Minnesota. Bingo, a clear hit:
The word Minnesota comes from the Dakota name for the Minnesota River, which got its name from one of two words in Dakota: "mní sóta", which means "clear blue water", or "Mníssota", which means "cloudy water". Early explorers interpreted the Dakota name for the Minnesota River in different ways, and four spellings of the state's name were considered before settling on "Minnesota" in 1849, when the Territory of Minnesota was formed. Dakota people demonstrated the name to early settlers by dropping milk into water and calling it mní sóta.
Many places in the state have similar Dakota names, such as Minnehaha Falls ("curling water" or waterfall), Minneiska ("white water"), Minneota ("much water"), Minnetonka ("big water"), Minnetrista ("crooked water"), and Minneapolis, a hybrid word combining Dakota mní ("water") and –polis (Greek for "city"). The state seal features the phrase Mni Sóta Makoce ("the land where the water reflects the skies"), the Dakota name for the larger region.
(Wikipedia)
The initial "Mi-" of Missouri, the Siouan name of the longest river in America, which flows into the Mississippi from the west just above St. Louis, is completely unrelated to the Dakotan names mentioned above. The main linguistic problems with Missouri are not with its etymology, but with how to pronounce it:
The state is named for the Missouri River, which was named after the indigenous Missouria, a Siouan-language tribe. French colonists adapted a form of the Illinois language-name for the people: Wimihsoorita. Their name means 'one who has dugout canoes'.
The name Missouri has several different pronunciations even among its present-day inhabitants, the two most common being mih-ZUR-ee and mih-ZUR-ə. Further pronunciations also exist in Missouri or elsewhere in the United States, involving the realization of the medial consonant as either or ; the vowel in the second syllable as either or ; and the third syllable as or . Any combination of these phonetic realizations may be observed coming from speakers of American English. In British Received Pronunciation, the preferred variant is , with being a possible alternative.
Donald M. Lance, a professor of English at the University of Missouri, stated that no pronunciation could be declared correct, nor could any be clearly defined as native or outsider, rural or urban, southern or northern, educated or otherwise. Politicians often employ multiple pronunciations, even during a single speech, to appeal to a greater number of listeners.[11] In informal contexts respellings of the state's name, such as "Missour-ee" or "Missour-uh", are occasionally used to distinguish pronunciations phonetically.
(Wikipedia)
Water, water everywhere, and plenty of drops to drink
— finis —
———-
=====
*Lake Bemidji got its name because "Bemidji" refers to the Mississippi River, and how it flows across the lake from west to east. The word Bemidji means "Lake with crossing waters" and in its native Ojibwe it is Bemidjigamaag. (source)
It is odd that, when the Mississippi exits Lake Itasca, it flows northward about 35 miles. I stood at the exact spot where the Mississippi enters Lake Bemidji. You can see the river current, just a few feet wide at this point, flowing into the lake, and continues to be visible all the way until it leaves the lake and finally heads south. This phenomenon of the river channel flow being visible in the expanse of the lake gives rise to some of the lake's names in Indian languages. Stranger still, when winter comes and the deep freeze sets in, and ice forms over the entire lake to a thickness of 3.5-4 feet, such that you can drive vehicles over it, build ice-fishing houses on it, and so forth (this winter was particularly severe, so the ice was said to be thicker than usual), nonetheless, one can still see the river channel of water flowing out into the lake.
Afterword
After all this talk about toponymic prefixes, I am reminded of the famous case of the name of the large city (pop. 7,495,000), Wúxī 無錫／无锡 (“Wuxi City, southern Jiangsu Province”) that lies in the southern Yangtze delta and borders Lake Tai. Superficially / ostensibly, the sinographically transcribed name means "no tin", but according to critical scholarship, both syllables are misinterpretations. The first syllable is not a negative, but is a prefix found in other place names of the region. As for xī 錫, it has nothing to do with tin but is likely derived from the Old Yue language or old Kra–Dai languages spoken in southern China and northern Vietnam circa 700 BC and later.
Selected readings
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