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Abipón

noun
Abi·​pón | \ ˈabəˌpän\
plural Abipones\ ˌabəˈpōnēz \ or Abipón\ like singular \

Definition of Abipón

1a : an American Indian people resident in the Argentine Chaco in the eighteenth century
b : a member of such people
2 : the Guaicuruan language of the Abipones

First Known Use of Abipón

1717, in the meaning defined at sense 1a

History and Etymology for Abipón

Spanish abipón and New Latin Abipones (plural), borrowed from Abipón (18th-century orthography) aoipon, a self-designation

Note: Evidently a self-designation. Elena Najlis, Lengua Abipona ([Buenos Aires]: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, 1966), vol. 2, p. 41 has aoipon from material in Martin Dobrizhoffer's Historia de Abiponibus (Vienna, 1784), her primary source. A reprint of the German translation of Dobrizhoffer (also Vienna, 1784), containing only the linguistic chapter (Des Abbé Martin Dobrizhoffer Auskunft über die Abiponische Sprache, Leipzig, 1902), has the following passage: “Statt bin ich Abiponer, sagen sie Aym Abipon [grave accents over the final nasals omitted], ich ein Abiponer” (“For ‘I am an Abipon’ they say ‘Aym Abipon,’ ‘I Abipon’”) (p. 33). This is surely a confirmation that, at least for the Abipones Dobrizhoffer knew, Abipon was an autonym. According to OED3 (Draft entry June 2009), “The name is reported (in Azara Descripción e Historia Paraguay (1814) 242) to have been given by the Spanish and is probably not a self-designation.” What Félix de Azara actually says about the Abipones is the following: “Los españoles les dan este nombre, los lenguas el de Ecusginå y los enimagas el de Quiabanabaité.” (“The Spaniards give them this name, [while] the Lengua [call them] Escugina and the enemies Quiabanabaité”) He gives the same information here as he does elsewhere in a lengthy catalog of indigenous peoples, that is, the name in Spanish, in the language of “los enimagas” [i.e., the Maká], and in the language of “los lenguas” [the Lengua]—the Makás and Lenguas being Indians closer to Asunción that Azara most likely knew best. So Azara really says nothing about what the Abipones might have called themselves; since he knew them only secondhand, he was not in a position to know.

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