CHEROKEE LANGUAGE... TUGALOO or DUGILU-YI

the Cherokee Syllabary (Alphabet)
and the evolution of Cherokee /Anglo words

Cherokee is written in a syllabary invented by Sequoyah (a.k.a. George Guess). In his system, each symbol represents a syllable rather than a single phoneme. While the number of syllables in English (tens of thousands) defy the use of a syllabary, the 85 characters in the Cherokee syllabary provide a suitable method to write Cherokee. Some symbols do resemble Latin alphabet letters, but the sounds are completely different (the form of the letter for "a" resembles Latin D, for example). Sequoyah had seen English writing, but didn't know how to write it; in all known cases where a person invented a script after seeing phonetic writing, but without knowing how to write, the results have been syllabaries. [from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_language]

How do we equate DU-GI-LU and Tugaloo?

DUGILU

Dugilu'yi (abbreviated Dugilu', and commonly written Tugaloo, or sometimes Toogelah or Toogoola)

a name occurring in several places in the old Cherokee country, the best known being Tugaloo river, so-called from a former Cherokee settlement of that name situated at the junction of Toccoa creek with the main stream, in Habersham county, Ga. The work is of uncertain etymology; but seems to refer to a place at the forks of a stream.
[from: http://donchesnut.com/genealogy/pages/cherokeeplace.htm]. Or it is possibly from the Cherokee, Ama-tu-gwaluny, which means "Water rolling over rocks there," or "Rough flowing water."

TUGALOO

TUGALOO: Pronounced "Too'ga-low" "Too'ga-loo" or "Too'goo-loo." The name Tugaloo (or Tugalo) is derived from the Cherokee settlement DUGILU-YI, which was situated at the confluence of Toccoa Creek with the Tugaloo River, an upper section of the Savannah River where it borders Georgia and South Carolina.

Early Anglo contact with the Cherokee had few literate individuals and even fewer translators. Most "frontiersmen" were notoriously poor at grammar and spelling even if they tried to write journals or reports about their experiences. When records were made, Anglo journalists had to record the place and personal Cherokee names phonetically. This resulted in many places having multiple English phonetic spellings. The naturalist, William Bartram, spelled the name TUGILO.

...and why spell it "SYM" ?

In Cherokee syllables beginning with "d" are pronounced almost as in English, but approaching to (t); do, du, dv are sounded as to, tu, tv in some words. So.. through early reporting and common usage, Cherokee DU became English "TU"; GI became "GA"; and LU became "LOO". Using the Cherokee phonetic symbols, Dugilu becomes....