Cherokee

Meaning

1. An indigenous North American people.
2. A city, the county seat of Cherokee County, Iowa.
3. A syllabary for the Cherokee language invented by Sequoyah.
4. A census-designated place in Butte County, California.
5. A former gold mining settlement in Nevada County, California.
6. Cherokee Village, Arkansas.
7. A town in Colbert County, Alabama.
8. A member of an indigenous North American people.
9. Their Iroquoian language, spoken in Oklahoma and North Carolina.

Etymology / origin

Most likely from the Cherokee autonym ᏣᎳᎩ (tsalagi). Derivation from a Choctaw exonym meaning "those who live in caves" (compare chiluk (“cave”)) has also been suggested — the Iroquois term for the Cherokee was Oyata'ge'ronon (“inhabitants of the cave country”) — as has derivation from a Creek term for "person(s) who speak(s) a non-Creek language" (see celokketv (“to speak a non-creek language”)). Whatever its origin, the ethnonym entered European languages at an early date, perhaps as early as the 1670s; in Spanish, the people are called the Tchalaquei as early as 1755.

Sources

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