My friend called me from Whitehorse in Canada’s northern Yukon Territory. He was quite surprised to find the mushers calling out to their dog teams the exact same commands he learned as a boy to control the plowhorse on his uncle’s farm in Maine.
It seems that the use of “Gee” and “Haw” for left or right crosses the boundaries of nations and species.
He was unable to find anyone in the Canadian North who could explain the origin of the terms. I have been equally unsuccessful here in the south.
Where did the words come from and why are they universally used for giving directions to animals?
I just checked http://m-w.com and the answer was “origin unknown.”
I’ll take a stab at this…
Basic animal understanding of the human language is tone and emphasis on vowels.
Basic commands readily understood by dogs and horses…
gh~EE~, h~AA~w, wh~OO~a and h~II~ke.
~UU~ has litle value as an attention getting sound because it’s not one.
Then there’s the “click, click” with the tongue used instead of words to get their attention, which can be used the same as ‘giddyup’ or ‘hike’
Not to mention the highly efficient whistles used by herding dog workers.
I imagine the whistle system of dog training didn’t go over too well in the frozen north, eh?
I think that giftedest’s post make good sense.
The sound/word “gee” is recorded in print in England before 1700. And it was used in the sense of telling an animal to go to the right.
A lot of American and Canadian gold-seekers came to the Yukon during the rush, and they bought and used dog-teams.
It may be the standard horse-team commands came with them. They would buy their dogs and harness from a local, may get some information on food, care & maintenance, but memorizing those Aleut or Eskimo commands might have been one item too many. Easier to teach the dogs Gee and Haw.