Why are Woodchucks called woodchucks? As near as I can make out they have nothing to do with wood or woods. Groundhog makes sense but by woodchuck?
Well I just had to link to How to Kill Evil Nazi Groundhogs
Blame it on the natives…
From http://www.m-w.com
"Main Entry: wood·chuck
Pronunciation: -"ch&k
Function: noun
Etymology: by folk etymology from a word of Algonquian origin; akin to Narraganset ockqutchaun woodchuck
Date: 1674
: a grizzled thickset marmot (Marmota monax) chiefly of Alaska, Canada, and the northeastern U.S. – called also groundhog "
From American Heritage Dictionary
“The word woodchuck is probably a folk etymology of a New England Algonquian word—that is, English-speaking settlers “translated” the Indian word into a compound of two words that made sense to them in light of the animal’s habitat.”
Well Merriam-Webster’s Word to the Wise Oct. '97 gives something other than their dictionary entry that I linked to above.
“English-speakers transformed the Algonquian arahkun into raccoon, and they turned chitmunk (probably from the Ojibwa acitamon, meaning “red squirrel”) into chipmunk. By a process called folk etymology, the unfamiliar word musquash became muskrat (the muskrat is a rodent, by the way), either the Ojibwa otchig (“fisher”) or the Cree otcheck became woodchuck, and apasum (literally, “white animal”) was parlayed into opossum.”