Proper noun
(plural Winonas)
- A female given name, used mainly in the United States.
- A city in Kansas
- A city in Minnesota
- A city in Mississippi
- A city in Missouri
- A town in Texas
Origin
From a Sioux (Dakota or Lakota) term given as a name to first-born children if they were female.
John Koontz suggested that the name was a compound of wi- (“female”) + no (“first”) + -na (a diminutive suffix) and thus a reflex of the Proto-Siouan numeral *rǫ/nǫ ("one"). That root is otherwise unattested in the Sioux languages, which use reflexes of *wį(y)ą ("one") instead, and a more prosaic analysis identifies the first element of the name with winyan (“woman”).
