Satellite image of Lake Huron
14 February 2022
Huron is an English and French name for the people of the Wyandot, or Wendat, Confederacy. The name was later transferred to the Great Lake. At the time of European contact, the Wyandot dwelled to the east of Georgian Bay, a large bay of Lake Huron. The people now primarily live in Quebec and Oklahoma.
The most common etymology given for Huron is that it comes from the French huron, meaning an uncultured person, ruffian, perhaps from hure (rough head of hair) + -on (diminutive or pejorative suffix). This explanation holds the term was applied by the French to the Wyandot people, and the evidence for this etymology rests chiefly in an account by Jérôme Lalemant, a Jesuit missionary to the Wyandot, sent to his superior Paul le Jeune on 7 June 1639:
Arriuez qu’il furent aux François, quelque Matelot ou Soldat voyant pour la premiere fois cette sorte de barbares, dont les vns portoient les cheueux sillõnez; en sorte que sur le milieu de la teste paroissoit vne raye de cheueux large d’vn ou deux doigts, puis de part & d’autre autãt de razé; en ensuite vn autre raye de cheueux & d'autres qui auoient vn costé de la teste tout razé, & l’autre garny de cheueux pendants iusques sur l’espaule, cette façon de cheueux luy semblant des hures, cela le porta à appeller ces barbares Hurons: & c’est le nom qui depuis leur est demeuré. Quelques-vns le rapportent à quelque autre semblable source, mais ce que nous en venons de dire semble le plus asseuré.
(Arriving at the French settlement, some Sailor or Soldier seeing for the first time this kind of barbarians, some of who wore their hair in ridges,—a ridge of hair one or two fingers wide appearing upon the middle of their heads, and on either side the same amount being shaved off, then another ridge of hair; others having one side of the head shaved clean, and the other side adorned with hair hanging to their shoulders,—this fashion of wearing the hair making their heads look to him like those of boars [hures], led him to call these barbarians “Hurons;” and this is the name that has clung to them ever since. Others attribute it to some other, though similar origin; but what we have just related seems the most authentic.)
The account sounds an awful like an attempt to make sense of an unfamiliar name, using French roots to explain an Indigenous name.
A second hypothesis has Huron coming from Irri-ronon (cat nation), an Iroquois name for the Eries, following a French pattern of adding an /h/ before initial vowels. Alternatively, Huron could simply be a variation on the Iroquois ronon (nation). Regardless of the source, like the names of many North American Indigenous peoples, it’s not a name the Wyandot applied to themselves.
Huron appears in English by 1649, when it appears in a linguistic text by Christian Raue:
The unity of the Characters make not divers tongues become one. As wee see in Latine, Italian, Spanish, French, Poland, Hungary, Irish, English, and the Hurones with other people in the West-Indies who since the comming in of the English, Spaniards and French have learnt the Latine Alphabet, and it may be in time all the West Indies will get and make use of the same Character. Yet it cannot bee thought that so great a part of the new World (lying opposite to our three knowne parts of the old, Asia, Africa, and Eurepe,) should not have many different tongues.
Sources:
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.
Lalemant, Jérôme. “Relation of the Occupations of the Fathers of the Society of Jesus, who are in the Huron Land, a Country of New France” (7 June 1639). Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610–1791, vol. 16 of 74. Reuben Gold Thwaite, ed. Cleveland, Ohio: Imperial Press, 1898, 228–31. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2019, s.v. Huron, n. and adj., Wyandot, n. and adj.
Raue, Christian. A Discourse of the Oriental Tongues. London: W. Wilson for T. Jackson, 1649, 79. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Vogel, Virgil J. Indian Names in Michigan. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press, 1986, 13–14. Google Books.
Photo credit: NASA, 2011. Public domain image.