Mohawk

Meanings

Noun

• A member of an indigenous people of North America originally from the Mohawk Valley in upstate New York to southern Quebec and eastern Ontario, the easternmost of the Iroquois Five Nations.
• A hairstyle where both sides are shaved, with the hair along the crest of the head kept long, and usually styled so as to stand straight up.
• A member of a gang (the Mohocks) that terrorized London in the early 18th century.

Proper Noun

• The Iroquoian language spoken by these North American indigenous people.
• Mohawk River, the largest tributary of the riv:Suf, Hudson River, New (state) York.

Origin

• From Dutch Mohawk.
• An exonym, probably from a Narragansett word meaning “they eat (animate things)”, “cannibals”. The phoneme is not present in the Mohawk language; the Mohawk autonym is Kanien'kehá:ka (Kanienkehaka, Kanyenkehaka).