History Sealth, Chief of the Suquamps, Namesake* of Seattle
While I was fly fishing in Montana, a mistake made it into print: In our Back-to-School Guide’s “Say WA?” glossary of Seattle terms, we provided an incorrect pronunciation for “Chief Sealth” (AKA Chief Seattle). “SEE-alth” should have been “SEE-ahlsh” or something similar; the Puget Sound Salish language (Lushootseed) had no “th” sound. Northwest History Link has a nice essay on Chief Sealth, including this discussion of the pronunciation of his name:
The Lushootseed language is written using the International Phonetic Alphabet, and in it Chief Seattle’s name has two marks not found in English [illustration]. One mark looks like a question mark without the dot at the end. This is a glottal stop as in “Uh oh.” Chief Seattle’s name is sometimes written Se’ahl and the ’ is another type of glottal stop. (The mistaken “Sealth” notion has eliminated this sound, which the word Seattle, pronounced See-attle, retains.) No one language contains all the phonemes (individual language sounds) found in all human languages, and the end-sound of Seattle does not occur in English. In Seattle’s name, this sound has shifted, according to Skagit elder and Lushootseed language expert Vi Hilbert. Originally it had a “glottalized barred lambda” at the end, an explosive sound. Later the pronunciation shifted to a lateral “l,” a sound something like “alsh” and represented by a font that looks like an l but is crossed horizontally at the center. This pronunciation, according to Vi Hilbert, is now considered correct. Chief Seattle’s name is pronounced approximately “See-ahlsh.”
*Note on the term “namesake”:
Historically, there has been some disagreement as to whether the original or the secondary person or thing is the “namesake.” According to AHD, a namesake is one that is named after another (as in “I am my great-aunt’s namesake.”). But modern usage seems to follow the OED’s broader definition: A person who or thing which has the same name as another. (Thus, both “I am my great-aunt’s namesake” and “My great-aunt is my namesake” are correct.) Still, my ear prefers AHD’s stricter usage rule. Perhaps I’d have been better off with “eponym”!
Fascinating.
Actually, reading through the lines of your account, it sounds like the Chief's name was probably pronounced very much like we pronounce Seattle today, at the time the city was named for him.
The glottalized l would probably have made it sound like SEE-agl - which when the last syllable dies away, sounds very like a two-sylable -attle strangled in the back of your throat.
The people who named Seattle knew the chief, and used his name.
Their translitteration must have been closer than we can imagine today.