Bright (linguistics and anthropology, UCLA; linguistics, U. of Colorado, Boulder) presents a dictionary of the origins of some 11,000 placenames used in English that have American Indian origins or associations. It is the first such reference work to cover all 49 states of the mainland U.S. The work began with data from existing publications, to which the author has added authoritative information on the origins of the words, based on current field research by a team of 12 anthropological linguists specializing in Native American languages and native speakers of those languages. Each entry includes the headword as spelled in the Geographical Names Information System, geographic location(s) of the placename, pronunciation, and etymology. The entries are alphabetically arranged; a geographic index in subsequent editions would be useful. For librarians, and students and scholars of American Indian culture, folklore, and local history. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)