Haudenosaunee (People of the Longhouse) is the autonym by which the Six Nations refer to themselves. Iroquois, a common historical name, is a term of colonial origin which some scholars consider a derogatory name adopted from the traditional enemies of the Haudenosaunee.
Haudenosaunee Haudenosaunee ( ; ),"Who We Are". Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Accessed October 24, 2025."Haudenosaunee (Iroquois)". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Accessed October 2025. is an anglicized spelling derived from two phonetically similar but etymologically distinct words in the Seneca language: , meaning "those of the extended house", and , meaning "house builders". The name "Haudenosaunee" first appears in English in Lewis Henry Morgan's work (1851), where he writes it as Ho-dé-no-sau-nee. The spelling "Hotinnonsionni" is also attested from later in the 19th century.Morgan, 1904 An alternative designation, Ganonsyoni, is occasionally encountered as well,E.g. in ; ; and from the Mohawk "the extended house", or from a cognate expression in a related Iroquoian language; in earlier sources it is variously spelled "Kanosoni", "akwanoschioni", "Aquanuschioni", "Cannassoone", "Canossoone", "Ke-nunctioni", or "Konossioni".
The Haudenosaunee use the traditional longhouse as a symbol of their Confederacy. Each nation is assigned a symbolic role within this structure, with the eastern and westernmost nations, the Mohawk and Seneca, serving as Keepers of the Eastern and Western Door respectively and the centrally-located Onondaga serving as the Keepers of the Fire. In keeping with the imagery of a family under one roof, the Mohawk, Seneca, and Onondaga are recognized as Elder Brothers in the Grand Council, while the Cayuga and Oneida are the Younger Brothers.
Six Nations The Haudenosaunee have also been called the Six Nations, after the constituent nations of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora. Prior to the entry of the Tuscarora into the confederacy in 1622, they were known as the Five Nations.
Ongweh’onweh A less common, older autonym for the people of the confederation is Ongweh’onweh, meaning "Original People" or "Real Human Being". At its most expansive, this name can refer to all indigenous people of the Americas.
Iroquois The origins of the name Iroquois ( ) are somewhat obscure, although the term has historically been used in French texts, according to the Haudenosaunee Conferedacy. Its first written appearance as "Irocois" is in Samuel de Champlain's account of his journey to Tadoussac in 1603. Other early French spellings include "Erocoise", "Hiroquois", "Hyroquoise", "Irecoies", "Iriquois", "Iroquaes", "Irroquois", and "Yroquois", pronounced at the time as [irokwe] or [irokwɛ]. Competing theories have been proposed for this term's origin, but none has gained widespread acceptance. In 1978 Ives Goddard wrote: "No such form is attested in any Indian language as a name for any Iroquoian group, and the ultimate origin and meaning of the name are unknown."
Jesuit priest and missionary Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix wrote in 1744:
In 1883, Horatio Hale wrote that Charlevoix's etymology was dubious. Hale suggested instead that the term came from Huron, and was cognate with the Mohawk "they who smoke", or Cayuga "a bear". In 1888, J. N. B. Hewitt expressed doubts that either of those words existed in the respective languages. He preferred the etymology from Innu-aimun (Montagnais) "true, real" and "snake", plus the French suffix. Later he revised this to Algonquin as the origin.
A more modern etymology was advocated by Gordon M. Day in 1968, elaborating upon Charles Arnaud from 1880. Arnaud had claimed that the word came from Innu , meaning "terrible man", via the reduced form . Day proposed a hypothetical Innu phrase , meaning "a man, an Iroquois", as the origin of this term. For the first element , Day cites cognates from other attested Innu dialects: , , and ; and for the second element , he suggests a relation to , , and – names used by neighboring Algonquian peoples to refer to the Haudenosaunee, Wendat (Huron), and Laurentian peoples.
The Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America attests the origin of Iroquois to , Algonquian for "rattlesnake". The French encountered the Algonquian-speaking tribes first, and would have learned the Algonquian names for their Haudenosaunee competitors.
See also List of country-name etymologies
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