A Fredericksburg, Virginia, man who once taught in the Aleut community of St. George Island, Alaska, asks about calidor, the local term for an unheated entryway or mudroom that buffers the house from Arctic weather. Calidor has an unusually well-traveled history. It entered Alaska Native languages through Russian, dating from the period of Russian control in Alaska. Russian had borrowed the word from German, which got it from French, which in turn borrowed it from Italian. Ultimately, it is akin to the English corridor, originally referring to a passageway or hallway in fortifications. Calidor, along with variants such as calador and kellidor, appear in Alutiiq, Sugpiaq, Aleut, and Yupik. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Calidor”: A Term in Alaska Native Languages for an Unheated Arctic Entryway or Mudroom”
Hello.
You have A Way with Words.
Hello.
My name is Bill, and I live in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Hi, Bill.
Well, great to talk with you.
Bill, what’s up?
Well, my wife and I were teachers on in an Aleut community, the island of St. George in the Bering Sea.
And one of the words that people use there that I this has always been interesting to me is the word callider.
Now, a calidor seems to be an arctic entryway or a mudroom.
You know, you come through one door and then you come through the real front door and it’s not heated.
But I’ve always wondered where the word calidor came from.
All right.
So let’s talk about this room for a second because this is kind of particular to cold climates.
It’s the place where you leave your dirty boots, your coat, your outside gear, and where you leave your muddy stuff so you don’t track all that back into the house.
Correct.
Yeah, I would call that a mudroom.
Yeah, mudroom.
In our Arctic entry, I heard you say that’s another term for it in Alaska, sometimes storm porch, or I think that’s a rare, or even just porch.
But we’re talking about so one door on the outside, you enter this room, you dump your stuff, and then you go into the inside in a cold climate.
It keeps the house insulated.
You’re not opening the main door right into the outdoors.
And I’m so glad that you asked about Calidor.
And, you know, Martha, you and I talk about so much of language and there’s, we can get excited about stuff.
But the words that get you really excited usually are just this, stuff like Calidor because it has traveled through so many languages.
To reach you, Bill, That word comes into the native Alaskan languages from Russian, from when the Russians controlled that part of Alaska.
Oh, yeah.
Everybody in St George Island had Russian names.
Absolutely.
And you will still hear these borrowed words peppered in the native languages and occasionally in English.
So, controlled what is now Alaska from around the 1730s to the 1860s.
But even before and after that, there were many Russian speakers in the region.
And one of the words they brought with them was this word that sounds like corridor, corridor.
And it means corridor or hallway.
And, they used it to refer to this this hallway or corridor that you would enter before entering the house.
But they got it from Germans, and the Germans got it from the French.
The French got it from the Italians.
And it wouldn’t be in Italy.
It was a word for a particular kind of hallway or corridor and fortifications.
So originally, it is literally the word corridor as we use it in English, but modified from all this travel that it’s done.
And so now you find it in a whole bunch of Alaskan languages, such as Alutik, Supiya, Aliyut, Yupik, and some others.
It’s just kind of incredible.
And even, I love this, even you will sometimes hear it very anglicized as Kelly door, as if Kelly was the Irish name Kelly.
Of course, it’s Maybe it’ll go back to Europe.
Yeah, exactly.
It might.
You never know, but it’s got a ton of spellings, as you might guess.
So C A L A D O R or K E L L I D O O R.
Most people want to turn that last level into the word door, D O O R.
But it’s not actually it’s a kind of an etymological fallacy that’s where it comes from.
Well, I’m glad to hear that because I’d never seen it in print.
I’ve only heard it.
Yeah, you’ll find it in the Dictionary of Alaskan, language and a whole bunch of people in Russia and in The United States and Canada who’ve studied the remnants of Russian language throughout that part of Canada have spent a great deal of time kind of logging these lexicalisms and recording them so they’re not completely lost to history.
Wow, Thanks.
And now it’s made it all the way to Fredericksburg.
That’s right.
And our show in English.
So, from Italy and through, like, a half dozen languages to reach this spot.
Well, thank you.
That was fascinating.
I knew it was.
It seemed like it started like, oh, Bill doesn’t even know what he’s in for.
Well, thank you, and have a good one.
Yeah, you too.
Take care.
Take care.
Take bye.
Stay warm.
Bye bye.
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