from Shuswap
This word originated in Canada
If you know sockeye, you know the basics about salmon. But there is a distinctive kind of sockeye with a distinctive name: the kokanee. It distinguishes itself from other sockeye by being non-anadromous. That is, it doesn't go from fresh water to salt and back again; it spends its whole life in fresh water.
Aside from that detail, it is very much like other sockeye, with one other little difference. Where other sockeye have grown to about twenty-four inches when they are finished with their seagoing careers and return to fresh water to spawn, the mature kokanee is only about one-third that length.
The name kokanee apparently comes from Shuswap, a language of the Salish family spoken in south central British Columbia, Canada. It is the name they gave to a river in which kokanee salmon are found. Applied to salmon, the name appears as early as 1875, with the spelling kik-e-ninnies indicating an attempt to make it look a little more like an English word. Shuswap still has about five hundred speakers nowadays, but no other Shuswap words have made a splash in our language.
