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Does the nickname that Tonto calls the Lone Ranger "Kemosabe" mean anything?

Question #66325. Asked by Babba06.
Last updated Oct 02 2016.

Related Trivia Topics: Vocabulary  
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wdwfla
Answer has 2 votes
wdwfla
18 year member
87 replies avatar

Answer has 2 votes.
Dr. Goddard, of the Smithsonian Institution, was reported as believing that Kemo Sabe was from the Tewa dialect. He supported his contention by calling on the "Ethnogeography of the Tewa Indians" which appeared in the 29th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (1916). It seems that in Tewa, "Apache" equates to Sabe and "friend" to Kema.

Jim Jewell, who directed "The Lone Ranger" until 1938 said he'd lifted the term from the name of a boys' camp at Mullet Lake just south of Mackinac, Michigan called Kamp Kee-Mo Sah-Bee. The camp had been established in 1911 by Jewell's father-in-law, Charles Yeager, and operated until about 1940. Translation of kee-mo sah-bee, according to Jewell was "trusty scout."

A scholar from the University of California at Berkley thought that Kemo Sabe came from the Yavapai, a dialect spoken in Arizona and meant "one who is white," since the Ranger always wore a white shirt and trousers in the earliest publicity photos. The Yavapai term is "kinmasaba" or "kinmasabeh"
link http://sci.lang.narkive.com/rDiUwvyZ/the-boy-linguist-researches-kemo-sabe

Response last updated by Nammage on Oct 02 2016.
May 30 2006, 12:57 AM
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zbeckabee
Answer has 4 votes
Currently Best Answer
zbeckabee
Moderator
18 year member
11752 replies avatar

Answer has 4 votes.

Currently voted the best answer.
Tonto greets the Lone Ranger with the expression "kemosabe", which has also been written "Kemo Sabe" or "Kemo Sabhay". The origin of this expression is somewhat unclear. However the writer of the Lone Ranger scripts, Fran Striker, said the actual expression was Ta-i ke-mo sah-bee, which he said meant "greetings trusty scout". In the pilot of the Clayton Moore TV series, "Enter the Lone Ranger", Tonto explictly states that "Kemosabe" means "trusty scout".

Various investigators have found other sources for this saying, some of them humorous and usually centering around the idea that "Kemo Sabe" is actually an insult or vulgarity. For instance, a Far Side comic strip has long since retired Lone Ranger discovering (in an Indian dictionary) that "Kemo Sabe" is an Apache expression for a "horse's rear end."

link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemosabe

May 30 2006, 7:30 AM
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