Talk:Oktibbeha County, Mississippi

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Etymology clues

The article claims currently that "Oktibbeha" is derived from a local "Native American" word meaning either "bloody water" or "icy creek". There is first an issue that "Native American" is not a language, I've already added a clarification tag. I tried to resolve the issue myself with some sleuthing, but the source given for the claim pretty much states the same thing. However it does go on to elaborate that the "word" Tibee means "creek", and is the source of -tibbe- in "Oktibbeha". The source also mentions Choctaw and Chickasaw battles, but doesn't go as far as to imply the county name comes from either of their languages. I thought these extra clues might be helpful in finding the language, and then maybe a better source. I've searched for Tibee and some variant spellings in hopes of finding the actual etymology, and found nothing. I checked Choctaw and Chickasaw language dictionaries and found the words for "creek" which bear little resemblance as far as I can tell. In Choctaw for example I find the word bokushi, and Chickasaw has a cognate for this word. I checked a couple of other words related to the "translation" given and the closest I found was that the word for water in both languages (Choctaw oka) bears some resemblance to the first syllable of "Oktibbeha".

Now this is WP:OR so I wouldn't add it to the article, but after this trail I am rather suspicious of the source. Toponym etymologies from a "Native American word" are frequently just made up, and there is little to support any of the claims made in the source. I've left what I've found here so that hopefully someone more knowledgeable or with better research skills can use it as a jumping off point to get to the bottom of it. AquitaneHungerForce (talk) 20:01, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @AquitaneHungerForce, for flagging the inadequate etymology. I've provided a sourced etymology that derives the "icy creek" meaning from a Choctaw phrase, okti abeha bok. — ℜob C. alias ALAROB 18:38, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To expand a little more on the derivation from okti abeha bok:

Choctaw doesn't distinguish a creek from a river exactly as English does, so bok is used rather than bokushi. Anyway, in the borrowing into English, bok was probably translated as "creek". There is no Oktibbeha Creek in Oktibbeha County — but there is a Tibbee Creek, which seems to have been corrupted over the years from "Oktibbeha." (There's also an Okatibbee Creek in southern Mississippi that might share the same name origin.)

Formerly the article quoted an "old authority" to claim that Oktibbeha meant "bloody creek." That story, which was only cited at second or third hand, was invented — probably by someone who couldn't speak a word of Choctaw or Chickasaw.

It's amazing, isn’t it, how many name derivations in published works still point to some "Native American word" as if that answers the question — or as if there were no Native American people to consult about the meaning of words and names. It's true that the Trail of Tears forced a loss of continuity of oral traditions about place names in the South. But it's also true that Choctaw remains a living language in the state of Mississippi. — ℜob C. alias ALAROB 19:11, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]