List of English words from indigenous languages of the Americas
This is a list of English language words borrowed from indigenous languages of the Americas, either directly or through intermediate European languages such as Spanish or French. † indicates a link to a definition of the word. It does not cover names of ethnic groups or place names derived from indigenous languages. Most words of Native American/First Nations language origin are the common names for indigenous flora and fauna, or describe items of Native American or First Nations life and culture. Some few are names applied in honor of Native  Americans or First Nations peoples or due to a vague similarity to the original object of the word. For instance, sequoias are named in honor of the Cherokee leader Sequoyah, who lived 2,000 miles (3200 km) east of that tree's range, while the kinkajou of South America was given a name from the unrelated North American wolverine. Words from Algonquian languages. Since Native Americans and First Nations peoples speaking a language of the Algonquian group were generally the first to meet English explorers and settlers along the Eastern Seaboard, many words from these languages made their way into English . In addition, many place names in North America are of Algonquian origin, for example: Mississippi (cf. and , "great river," referring to the Mississippi River) and Michigan (cf. , , "great sea," referring to Lake Michigan). Canadian provinces and U.S. states, districts, counties and municipalities bear Algonquian names, such as Québec, Ottawa, Saskatchewan, Nantucket, Massachusetts, Naugatuck, Connecticut, Wyoming, District of Keewatin, Outagamie County, Wisconsin and Chicago, Illinois, or Algonquian-derived names, such as Algoma. Furthermore, some indigenous peoples of the Americas groups are known better by their Algonquian exonyms, rather than by their endonym, such as the Eskimo (see below), Winnebago (perhaps from  ), Sioux (ultimately from ), Assiniboine () and Chipewyan (). Words from Nahuatl. Words of Nahuatl origin have entered many European languages. Mainly they have done so via Spanish. Most words of Nahuatl origin end in a form of the Nahuatl "absolutive suffix" (, , or , or the Spanish adaptation ), which marked unpossessed nouns. Words from Quechua. A number of words from Quechua have entered English, mostly via Spanish, adopting Hispanicized spellings.