Pescatum, said to mean ‘pollock,’ occurs as an adjectival in Peskadamioukka[n]tti, the modern Passamaquoddy (p. 26).

Naha[n]m[oo], the Abnaki name of the ‘eel,’ is found in “Nehumkeag, the English of which is Eel Land, ... a stream or brook that empties itself into Kennebec River,” not far from Cobbissecontee.[88] This brook was sometimes called by the English, Nehumkee.  The Indian name of Salem, Mass., was Nehumkeke or Nauemkeag, and a place on the Merrimac, near the mouth of Concord River (now in Lowell, I believe,) had the same name,—­written, Naamkeak.

[Footnote 88:  Col.  William Lithgow’s deposition, 1767,—­in New England Historical and General Register, xxiv. 24.]

* * * * *

In view of the illustrations which have been given, we repeat what was stated in the beginning of this paper, that Indian place-names are not proper names, that is unmeaning marks, but significant appellatives, each conveying a description of the locality to which it belongs.  In those parts of the country where Indian languages are still spoken, the analysis of such names is comparatively easy.  Chippewa, Cree, or (in another family) Sioux-Dakota geographical names may generally be translated with as little difficulty as other words or syntheses in the same languages.  In New England, and especially in our part of New England, the case is different.  We can hardly expect to ascertain the meaning of all the names which have come down to us from dead languages of aboriginal tribes.  Some of the obstacles to accurate analysis have been pointed out.  Nearly every geographical name has been mutilated or has suffered change.  It would indeed be strange if Indian polysyntheses, with their frequent gutturals and nasals, adopted from unwritten languages and by those who were ignorant of their meanings, had been exempted from the phonetic change to which all language is subject, as a result of the universal disposition “to put more facile in the stead of more difficult sounds or combination of sounds, and to get rid altogether of what is unnecessary in the words we use."[89] What Professor Haldeman calls otosis, ’that error of the ear by which words are perverted to a more familiar form,’[90] has effected some curious transformations. Swatara,[91] the name of a stream in Pennsylvania, becomes ’Sweet Arrow;’ the Potopaco of John Smith’s map (p[oo]tuppag, a bay or cove; Eliot,) on a bend of the Potomac, is naturalized as ’Port Tobacco.’ Nama’auke, ‘the place of fish’ in East Windsor, passes through Namerack and Namalake to the modern ‘May Luck.’ Moskitu-auke, ‘grass land,’ in Scituate, R.I., gives the name of ‘Mosquito Hawk’ to the brook which crosses it.[92]

[Footnote 89:  Whitney’s Language and the Study of Language, p. 69.—­“Ein natuerliches Volksgefuehl, oft auch der Volkswitz, den nicht mehr verstandenen Namen neu umpraegte und mit anderen lebenden Woertern in Verbindung setzte.”  Dr. J. Bender, Die deutschen Ortsnamen (2te Ausg.) p. 2.]