Abstract

While several studies of Native American place names exist inventories of a particular tribe’s names for other populations are largely lacking. This work presents 121 Kiowa ethnonyms of other Native American and non-Native populations. Data are examined for their qualitative breadth and quantitative semantic bases, shedding insights on Kiowa cultural views and relations with other tribes. Results suggest a number of observations about the basic structure of Kiowa ethnonyms, the nature and use of tribal ethnonyms, and general comparisons with other forms of Kiowa naming practices. Finally, data raise several methodological questions for future research in Native American tribal ethnonymy. All Kiowa lexica are written in the Parker P. McKenzie Kiowa Orthography (Meadows and McKenzie 2001), which is recognized by the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma and used in Kiowa language classes at the University of Oklahoma. A pronunciation guide is provided at the end of the article.