7.  The locative post-position, _-et_, _-it_ or _-ut_,[99] means in, at or on,—­not ‘land’ or ‘place.’  It locates, not the object to the name of which it is affixed, but something else as related to that object,—­which must be of such a nature that location can be predicated of it. Animate nouns, that is, names of animate objects cannot receive this affix.  ‘At the rock’ (ompsk-ut), ’at the mountain’ (wadchu-ut), or ‘in the country’ (ohk-it, auk-it), is intelligible, in Indian or English; ‘at the deer,’ ‘at the bear,’ or ‘at the sturgeons,’ would be nonsense in any language.  When animate nouns occur in place-names, they receive the formative of verbals, or serve as adjectival prefixes to some localizing ground-word or noun-generic.

[Footnote 99:  Abnaki and Cree, _-k_ or _-g_,—­Delaware and Chippewa, _-ng_; or _-[n]g_,—­with a connecting vowel.]

8.  Finally,—­in the analysis of geographical names, differences of language and dialect must not be disregarded.  In determining the primary meaning of roots, great assistance may be had by the comparison of derivatives in nearly related languages of the same stock.  But in American languages, the diversity of dialects is even more remarkable than the identity and constancy of roots.  Every tribe, almost every village had its peculiarities of speech.  Names etymologically identical might have widely different meanings in two languages, or even in two nations speaking substantially the same language.  The eastern Algonkin generic name for ‘fish’ (nama-us, Del. namai-s) is restricted by northern and western tribes to a single species, the sturgeon (Chip. namai’,) as the fish, par excellence. Attuk, in Massachusetts was the common fallow-deer,—­in Canada and the north-west the caribou or reindeer.  The Abnaki Indian called his dog (atie) by a name which the Chippewa gives his horse (oti-un; n’di, my horse).[100] The most common noun-generic of river names in New England (_-tuk_, ‘tidal river’) occurs rarely in those of Pennsylvania and Virginia, where it is replaced by _-hanne_ (’rapid stream’), and is unknown to western Algonkin tribes whose streams are undisturbed by tides.  The analysis of a geographical name must be sought in the language spoken by the name-givers.  The correct translation of a Connecticut or Narragansett name is not likely to be attained by searching for its several components in a Chippewa vocabulary; or of the name of a locality near Hudson’s River, by deriving its prefix from an Abnaki adverb and its ground-word from a Chippewa participle,—­as was actually done in a recently published list of Indian names.

[Footnote 100:  Both words have the same meaning,—­that of ’a domestic animal,’ or literally, ‘animate property;’ ’he who belongs to me.’]

INDIAN NAMES.