What do these words have in common??

Hi, Someone sent my wife this riddle asking what the following words all had in common :

chaos hiawatha ember beer eerie artichoke elevator whine

any ideas?

Many thanks in advance,

'Daimajin' wrote

Possible Spoiler.



Some of them have syllables that sound like individual letters:

chaos - Kos. hiawatha - hiAwatha ember - Mber eerie - eerE artichoke - artEchoike. elevator - elEvator whine - Yn

Not sure about 'Beer' though.

Are you sure we're not after an 'odd one out'?

They're all the first names of guys in goofball knock-knock jokes

Example

Knock Knock. Who's there? Hiawatha. Hiawatha who? Hia-watha teenage werewolf

Also 'Arti-chokes when he eats too much,' 'Whine ott let me in and I'll tell you my real name,' etc.

Actually though, isn't 'Elevator' the name you get when Ella Fitzgerald marries Darth Vader? Hmm, I'll have to give this some more thought.

None of them have anagrams.

The OED has 'hewin' as an obsolete form of 'heaven'.

And what about 'overlate'?

Throw in BREE and BERME as well.

They are all about the Iroquois Federation, which Hiawatha helped found. Their constitution, upon which the US Constitution was modeled, was successful for centuries unti European epidemics left the survivors in chaos.

Carol and Melvin Ember are anthropologists who have written about the Iroquios.

The Iroquios Brewing Company was big in western New York from 1830 until 1971.

The Eerie were enemies of the Iroquois for centuries, until the Iroquois got firearms in the 17th Century. After that, many Iroquois were of Eerie ancestry.

The artichoke is called the Iroquois Potato.

For many years, the Iroquois had a periodical called 'Ne Jaguhnigoageswatha', which means 'Mental Elevator.'

In 'Last of the Mohegans,' Uncas called the Iroquois 'dogs that whine.'

'Daimajin' wrote

If I were to make a puzzle using this idea, I'd spell out the name of the person I was giving the puzzle to, not my own name.

I'd make the word begin with a letter different from the one it stands for, if possible. For I, perhaps 'aisle' or 'either'; for E, perhaps 'aeolian' or 'oestrus', if the recipient is, like me, Rightpondian.

But it's a very good puzzle on the Iroquois theme, isn't it?