Maliseet
/ˈmæl.ə.siːt/noun
A member of a First Nations/Native American people of the Wabanaki Confederacy, primarily in New Brunswick and Maine.
Did you know?The name is an exonym: French speakers adapted a neighboring people’s name, and the common claim that it means “lazy speakers” is a folk etymology that modern scholarship rejects.
Etymological Timeline
Pre-Contact / Indigenous source
Native
(related to the Passamaquoddy-Maliseet self-designation within the Eastern Algonquian naming network)
“An Indigenous ethnonym used within a wider regional language and identity context”
17th Century
French
Malécite / Maliseet
“French forms applied to the people by colonists and missionaries”
18th–19th Century
English
Maliseet
“English adoption of the French-derived name for the people”
Modern English
English
Maliseet
“The standard English ethnonym for the Maliseet people”
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