About Merriam’s digitized word lists

The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley digitized its microfilm copies of Merriam’s word lists and put them up on archive.org. These digital copies are difficult to navigate, because they is organized by microfilm reel rather than by list, or by language. I am not affiliated with the Bancroft Library, but I made this page to help interested researchers find the Merriam word lists that are relevant to their research. You can read more here.

Links to Merriam’s word lists

Links to individual word lists can be found below, organized by language group. The groups are listed in a geographical order, roughly from the northwest to the southeast, as in the original collection. Merriam’s names for each group, and Heizer’s (1966) numerical classification, are in parentheses. Language names and language groupings that are not from Merriam himself are either from Golla (2011) or from the Bancroft finding aid.

The word-list links are to the first page of each resource. Once you have clicked through to a list, use your right arrow key to page forward through the document. Some lists represent multiple languages, so be sure to read Merriam’s notes at the beginning of each list!

This page is under construction. Links to all available digitized “vocabulary” lists are present, but not all links to “natural history vocabulary” lists have been added.