Kaya’aton’my’s Series – Nimiipuu Names
While we have a pretty good shot at guessing Two Hawks’s name, I wanted to make a list of the most likely names for the Nimiipuu/Nez Perce characters in Kaya’s series, as a few Nimiipuutímt dictionaries are available.
Even as a kid, I always wondered what everyone’s name was in their actual language, as all but Kaya’s names are translated to their English meaning. I see why this was done– the English-speaking children that make up the target audience would likely be confused by an abundance of names they’d have trouble pronouncing– but even then I do wish to know the names of the characters we all hold so dear.
This is the dictionary I was able to use. I’ll also cite it properly at the bottom of the post. I also utilized nimipuutimt.org, which was incredibly helpful and includes video lessons as well as grammar lessons.
However,
Disclaimer: I am an English-speaking white girl. While I’m using as many official dictionaries as I can, I will likely fuck up grammar on occasion.
Most importantly I will likely fuck up grammar/sentence structure due to my low education in this field; I also have trouble deciphering how (or if) one changes a word when it switches structure; for instance, a verb becoming an adjective. There is information on this on nimiipuutimt.org, but I’m afraid I have not been very good at translating it from English properly.
As such, I will provide each word separately, but not make any definitive claims on word order. I have everything under the cut so that I can keep everything updated should new information come in or should I become more confident in translation.
If anyone who can speak Nimiipuutímt would like to add anything, please for the love of everything do so, your input would obviously be way more useful than mine.
So. Let’s begin.
