Re: Finno-Ugric languages

Tommie Powell wrote:

> "What are the people of your tribe called?"
> The answer (in that tribe's language) was "People".
>
> "What are the people of that other tribe called?"
> The answer (in that same language) was "Enemy".
>
> So Navaho really means People, and Apache really means Enemy.
> "Siwash" is imperfectly pronounced French for "Savages".
Yeah, reminds of the story that Capt. Cook asked the natives
what they called their place. They said "O Tahiti" meaning
"It is Tahiti", so European maps read "Otaheite" for some time.

I'm having trouble coming up with a good short morpheme
for "people" (trying to base it on Latin/IE). I like
"vir" for male persons, "fem" for female, but the
best-so-far for both (epicene?) is "pern" or "dem",
which really won't do. Hmm, maybe "sav" ...