Etymology of Name
Yup'ik (plural Yupiit) comes from the Yup'ik word yuk meaning "person" plus the post-base -pik meaning "real" or "genuine." Thus, it means literally "real people." The ethnographic literature sometimes refers to the Yup'ik people or their language as Yuk or Yuit. In the Hooper Bay-Chevak and Nunivak dialects of Yup'ik, both the language and the people are given the name Cup'ik.
The use of an apostrophe in the name “Yup’ik”, compared to Siberian “Yupik,” exemplifies the Central Yup’ik’s orthography, where “the apostrophe represents gemination of the ‘p’ sound”.
The "person/people" (human being) in the Eskimo (Yupik and Inuit) languages:
| Eskimo languages | singular | dual | plural |
| Yupik languages | |||
| Sirenik | йух | (none) | йугый |
| Siberian Yupik | yuk | ? | yuit |
| Naukan | yuk | ? | ? |
| Central Alaskan Yup’ik | yuk | yuuk | yuut (< yuuget) |
| Chevak Cup’ik | cuk | cuugek | cuuget |
| Nunivak Cup’ig | cug | cuug | cuuget |
| Alutiiq or Sugpiaq | suk | suuk | suuget |
| Inuit languages | |||
| Iñupiaq or Alaskan Inuit | iñuk | iñuuk | iñuit / iñuich |
| Inuvialuk or Western Canadian Inuit | inuk | ? | ? |
| Inuktitut or Eastern Canadian Inuit | inuk | inuuk | inuit |
| Greenlandic or Kalaallisut | inuk | (none) | inuit |
Read more about this topic: Yupik Peoples
Famous quotes containing the word etymology:
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)