What is Gitchy Goomy?

Answer 1

I know it's a Neil Diamond song, but I couldn't tell you for sure what it means in that context. What I did think of though is the song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot. The song is about a ship that sank on Lake Superior. In the opening verse, he uses the Chippewa name for the lake, "Gitche Gumee." Not sure if this is related, but it is nonetheless interesting.

Answer 2

Gitche Gumee

Answer 3

The most famous reference is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's
The Song of Hiawatha which begins...

On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
Of the shining Big-Sea-Water,


In the Ojibwe language, Lake Superior is called "Gichigami" ("big water"), but it is better known as "Gitche Gumee" as recorded by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in The Song of Hiawatha. Lake Superior is referred to as "Gitche Gumee" in the song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, by Gordon Lightfoot.

Listed below are a couple pix of Lake Superior, aka Gichigami

Answer 4

The Ojibway (=Chippewa) name for what we now call Lake Superior.

In the poem "Hiawatha", Henry Wadsworth Longfellow spells it "Gitche Gumee":
> By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
> By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
> Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
> Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
[etc.]

In the song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", Gordon Lightfoot spells it "Gitchigumi":
> The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
> Of the big lake they called Gitchigumi
> The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
> When the skies of November turn gloomy
[etc.]

Other spellings include:
|--: Gitchi-Goomi
|--: Gitche Gumi
|--: Kitchi-Gami
|--: Gitchi-Gami

One source (see citations) claims this:
|--: Gii-dzhii Ojibwe-gah-meeng = the Great Sea of the Ojibwe

Most other sources translate simply it as "great lake" or "big water".

Answer 5

ask Neil diamond !? :)