artificial manner so as to avoid the meeting of harsh or disagreeable
sounds," &c. The "single sound or letter" the "one or more syllables,"
were chosen not as "part or parcel" of a word but because of their
_inherent significance_. The Delaware "_Pilape_, a youth," is
_not_--as Heckewelder and Duponceau represented it to be[95]--"formed
from _pilsit_, chaste, innocent, and _lenape_, a man," but from PIL-
(Mass. _pen-_, Abn. _pir-_,) strange, novel, _unused_ (and hence)
pure,--and -A[N]PE (Mass. _-omp_, Abn. _a[n]bé_) a male, _vir_. It is
true that the same roots are found in the two words PIL-_sit_ (a
participle of the verb-adjective _pil-esu_, 'he is pure,') and
_len_-A[N]PE, 'common man:' but the statement that "one or more
syllables" are _taken from_ these words to form _Pilape_ is inaccurate
and misleading. It might with as much truth be said that the English
word _boyhood_ is formed from selected syllables of boy-ish and
man-hood; or that purity 'compounds together in an artificial manner'
fractions of _pur_ify and qual_ity_.

[Footnote 93: Correspondence of Duponceau and Heckewelder, in Trans.
Historical and Literary Committee of Am. Philos. Society, p. 403.]

[Footnote 94: Ibid., p. 406.]

[Footnote 95: Preface to Duponceau's translation of Zeisberger's
Grammar, p. 21. On Duponceau's authority, Dr. Pickering accepted this
analysis and gave it currency by repeating it, in his admirable paper
on "Indian Languages," in the Encyclopædia Americana, vol. vi.]

We meet with similar analyses in almost every published list of Indian
names. Some examples have been given in the preceding pages of this
paper,--as in the interpretation of 'Winnipisiogee' (p. 32) by 'the