The honest answer is: very few
Many people expect English to be full of Apache words. It is not. The Apache peoples have lived in the Southwest alongside Spanish, Mexican and then English-speaking neighbours for centuries, but the words that moved into everyday English mostly came from other Native languages, from Spanish, or from the way outsiders named people and places. The best-documented “Apache” word in English is the name Apache itself, and even that was not the Apache peoples’ own choice of label.
This piece walks through the main candidates and says how secure each one is. Where dictionaries or scholars disagree, it says so.
The word Apache
“Apache” is the clearest case, but its source is uncertain and it is an outside name. One frequently cited explanation traces it to a Pueblo word, often given as Zuni, that outsiders understood as meaning “enemy”; other proposals have been made. Spanish writers used forms of the word from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and English took it from Spanish. Many Apache people prefer or also use their own names, such as Ndee, and the name of a particular nation (Chiricahua, Mescalero, White Mountain Apache and so on) is more accurate when it applies.
The word also took on other lives in English. In early twentieth-century France, a Paris street criminal was called an “apache”, and a dramatic dance took its name from that usage. That story belongs to the French language and has no Apache connection, as the case of the Paris apache dance shows.
Words that look Apache but are not
Several words associated with Southwestern Native life have a different source.
- Wickiup. The word is used in English for the brush-covered dwellings associated with Apache camps, and the dwellings themselves matter in the account of wickiup camps. The word, however, is generally traced by dictionaries to an Algonquian language, not to Apache. It was applied to Apache homes by English speakers who already knew the term.
- Tipi and similar words. These come from Plains languages such as Siouan ones. Some Apache groups, especially those living on the southern Plains, used hide-covered tents, but the English word is not Apache.
- Kachina. A Pueblo word, Hopi in origin, and part of Pueblo religious life.
- Mescal. This word came into English through Spanish from Nahuatl. It names the roasted agave that was important in Apache foodways, but the word did not come from an Apache language.
- Squaw. An Algonquian-derived word that is widely regarded today as offensive, and it is not Apache.
These examples show a general pattern: English speakers in the Southwest often learned Native words through Spanish or through earlier contact in other regions, then applied them everywhere.
A closely related case: Navajo
One of the few well-known English words from an Athabaskan language of the Southwest is “hogan”, the traditional Navajo dwelling. It comes from a Navajo word. The Navajo are a separate nation, closely related by language to the Apache, and the word is Navajo rather than Apache. The English name “Navajo” itself passed through Spanish and is generally thought to originate in a Tewa word, though sources differ. Mixing up Navajo and Apache vocabulary is common, yet each people has its own government and history, a point made in discussions of Navajo as separate nation status.
Uncertain and folk etymologies
Some words are linked to Apache in popular sources but need careful handling.
Tiswin. This is a name used in the Southwest for a fermented drink. Dictionaries and writers have given different sources, including Apache and Spanish ones, and the connection is not firmly established in a way this site can state as fact.
“Geronimo!” A widely told story holds that United States Army paratroopers in the early 1940s began shouting the name of the Chiricahua leader Geronimo as they jumped, after a film about him was shown. The tale is repeated often, and the exact origin of the habit is hard to confirm. Whatever its history, it uses a personal name that originated as the Spanish form of Jerome, not an Apache word, and it reflects how Geronimo’s name entered popular culture rather than how Apache is spoken. The man himself, Geronimo, is a subject for history, not for word origins.
Apache tears. The name given to small rounded pieces of volcanic glass is common in rock shops. Stories attached to it are sold as Native legend, but they are not reliably documented Apache traditions, and visitors should treat them as marketing.
Place names and group names
Apache nations’ names did enter English, mostly through Spanish. Chiricahua, Mescalero, Jicarilla, Lipan and Tonto all appear in English in forms given by Spanish speakers, and some of them are Spanish words, not Apache ones. Cibecue and a few other names may come from Apache words but their spellings are approximations. These belong more to the subject of Apache place names than to vocabulary.
Brand names and mascots
Many English uses of “Apache” are brand names, military names or team names. They borrow the word, not a vocabulary. Their effect on public ideas about Apache peoples can be seen in the debates over Apache names as mascots and in the long shadow of film Westerns and Apache image-making.
Why so few?
Several factors probably contributed, although historians and linguists would not all weigh them the same way. Contact was shaped by conflict, by Spanish as an intermediary language, and by the reservation system, which often removed Apache children from their language. English-speaking settlers also tended to borrow place names and group names rather than everyday vocabulary. Those who want actual Apache words should turn to the nations’ language programs, not to English dictionaries.