"Today's question:

How did Indian tribes get their names? Did splinter groups just go off and say, "We are going to be the Hopis" (or Apaches or Sinagua)?

That's a good question. Some of the names are a mix of Spanish corruptions of Native words, names one tribe may have given to another, or a tribe's name for itself.

Apache, for example, seems to have come from apachu, the Zuni word for "enemy."

Navajos refer to themselves as the Dineh, the people. But they got the name Navajo from the Spanish by way of the Tewa word navahu, meaning "field adjoining an arroyo." Hopi is a form of the Hopi word for "peaceful people.""

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Tribes named themselves and each other (The Arizona Republic 4/10)