1. Nâïag, 'a corner, angle, or point.' This is a verbal, formed from nâ-i, 'it is angular,' 'it corners.' Eliot wrote "yaue naiyag wetu" for the "four corners of a house," Job i. 19. Sometimes, nâi receives, instead of the formative -ag, the locative affix (nâï-it or nâï-ut); sometimes it is used as an adjectival prefixed to auke, 'land.' One or another of these forms serves as the name of a great number of river and sea-coast 'points.' In Connecticut, we find a 'Nayaug' at the southern extremity of Mason's Island in Mystic Bay, and 'Noank' (formerly written, Naweag, Naiwayonk, Noïank, &c.) at the west point of Mystic River's mouth, in Groton; Noag or Noyaug, in Glastenbury, &c. In Rhode Island, Nayatt or Nayot point in Barrington, on Providence Bay, and Nahiganset or Narragansett, 'the country about the Point.'[61] On Long Island, Nyack on Peconick Bay, Southampton,[62] and another at the west end of the Island, opposite Coney Island. There is also a Nyack on the west side of the Tappan Sea, in New Jersey.
2. Wonkun, 'bended,' 'a bend,' was sometimes used without affix. The Abnaki equivalent is [oo]anghíghen, 'courbe,' 'croché' (Râle). There was a Wongun, on the Connecticut, between Glastenbury and Wethersfield, and another, more considerable, a few miles below, in Middletown. Wonki is found in compound names, as an adjectival; as in Wonki-tuk, 'bent river,' on the Quinebaug, between Plainfield and Canterbury,—written by early recorders, 'Wongattuck,' 'Wanungatuck,' &c., and at last transferred from its proper place to a hill and brook west of the river, where it is disguised as Nunkertunk. The Great Bend between Hadley and Hatfield, Mass., was called Kuppo-wonkun-ohk, 'close bend place,' or 'place shut-in by a bend.' A tract of meadow west of this bend was called, in 1660, 'Cappowonganick,' and 'Capawonk,' and still retains, I believe, the latter name.[63] Wnogquetookoke, the Indian name of Stockbridge, Mass., as written by Dr. Edwards in the Muhhecan dialect, describes "a bend-of-the-river place."
Another Abnaki word meaning 'curved,' 'crooked,'—pikanghén—occurs in the name Pikanghenahik, now 'Crooked Island,' in Penobscot River.[64]
3. Hócquaun (uhquôn, Eliot), 'hook-shaped,' 'a hook,'—is the base of Hoccanum, the name of a tract of land and the stream which bounds it, in East Hartford, and of other Hoccanums, in Hadley and in Yarmouth, Mass. Heckewelder[65] wrote "Okhúcquan, Woâkhúcquoan or (short) Húcquan," for the modern 'Occoquan,' the name of a river in Virginia, and remarked: "All these names signify a hook." Campanius has 'hóckung' for 'a hook.'
Hackensack may have had its name from the húcquan-sauk, 'hook mouth,' by which the waters of Newark Bay find their way, around Bergen Point, by the Kill van Cul, to New York Bay.
3. Sóhk or Sauk, a root that denotes 'pouring out,' is the base of many local names for 'the outlet' or 'discharge' of a river or lake. The Abnaki forms, sang[oo]k, 'sortie de la rivière (seu) la source,' and sanghede'teg[oo]é [= Mass. saukituk,] gave names to Saco in Maine, to the river which has its outflow at that place, and to Sagadahock (sanghede'aki), 'land at the mouth' of Kennebeck river.
Saucon, the name of a creek and township in Northampton county, Penn., "denotes (says Heckewelder[66]) the outlet of a smaller stream into a larger one,"—which restricts the denotation too narrowly. The name means "the outlet,"—and nothing more. Another Soh´coon, or (with the locative) Saukunk, "at the mouth" of the Big Beaver, on the Ohio,—now in the township of Beaver, Penn.,—was a well known rendezvous of Indian war parties.[67]
Saganaum, Sagana, now Saginaw[68] Bay, on Lake Huron, received its name from the mouth of the river which flows through it to the lake.
The Mississagas were people of the missi-sauk, missi-sague, or (with locative) missi-sak-ing,[69] that is 'great outlet.' In the last half of the seventeenth century they were seated on the banks of a river which is described as flowing into Lake Huron some twenty or thirty leagues south of the Sault Ste. Marie (the same river probably that is now known as the Mississauga, emptying into Manitou Bay,) and nearly opposite the Straits of Mississauga on the South side of the Bay, between Manitoulin and Cockburn Islands. So little is known however of the history and migrations of this people, that it is perhaps impossible now to identify the 'great outlet' from which they first had their name.
The Saguenay (Sagnay, Sagné, Saghuny, etc.), the great tributary of the St. Lawrence, was so called either from the well-known trading-place at its mouth, the annual resort of the Montagnars and all the eastern tribes,[70] or more probably from the 'Grand Discharge'[71] of its main stream from Lake St. John and its strong current to and past the rapids at Chicoutimi, and thence on to the St. Lawrence.[72] Near Lake St. John and the Grand Discharge was another rendezvous of the scattered tribes. The missionary Saint-Simon in 1671 described this place as one at which "all the nations inhabiting the country between the two seas (towards the east and north) assembled to barter their furs." Hind's Exploration of Labrador, ii. 23.