Etymology

Biloxi

B3I1L1O1X8I1

Today it means: A member of a Native American people formerly inhabiting an area near the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in southeast Mississippi. Full definition →

French bilocchy ← bll Tanêks ąyaadi
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The story

  1. bll · derived fromTanêks ąyaadi
  2. French · borrowed frombilocchy
  3. English todayBiloxi

Borrowed from French bilocchy (recorded by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville in 1699), itself a corruption of Biloxi Tanêks ąyaadi (literally “first people”). The shift of /t/ to /b/ and /n/ to /l/ occurred via Mobilian, however James Owen Dorsey has stated that this “agrees with the laws of Siouan consonant changes”.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.