While a variety of theories have been postulated for the name of Canada, its origin is now accepted as coming from the Laurentian language word , meaning 'village' or 'settlement'. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona. Cartier later used the word Canada to refer not only to that particular village but to the entire area subject to Donnacona (the chief at Stadacona); by 1545, European books and maps had begun referring to this small region along the Saint Lawrence River as Canada.
From the 16th to the early 18th century, Canada referred to the part of New France that lay along the Saint Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada. These two colonies were collectively named the Canadas until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841.
Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the legal name for the new country at the London Conference, and the word Dominion was conferred as the country's title. The federal government of Louis St. Laurent ended the practice of using Dominion in the statutes of Canada in 1951. By the 1950s, the term Dominion of Canada was no longer used by the United Kingdom, which considered Canada a "Realm of the Commonwealth".
The Canada Act 1982, which brought the constitution of Canada fully under Canadian control, referred only to Canada. Later that year, the name of the national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day. The term Dominion was used to distinguish the federal government from the provincial ones, though after the Second World War the term federal had replaced dominion.
Etymology
The name Canada is now generally accepted as originating from the St. Lawrence Iroquoian word (), meaning 'village' or 'settlement'. Related translations include 'land' or 'town', with subsequent terminologies meaning 'cluster of dwellings' or 'collection of huts'. This explanation is historically documented in Cartier's Bref récit et succincte narration de la navigation faite en MDXXXV et MDXXXVI.
Although the Laurentian language, which was spoken by the inhabitants of St. Lawrence Valley settlements such as Stadacona (modern-day Quebec City) and Hochelaga (modern-day Montreal) in the 16th century, is now extinct, it was closely related to other dialects of the Iroquoian languages, such as the Oneida and Mohawk languages. Related cognates meaning 'town' include , , and in the Mohawk, Onondaga, and Seneca languages respectively. Prior to archaeological confirmation that the St. Lawrence Iroquois were a separate people from the Mohawk, most sources specifically linked the name's origin to the Mohawk word instead of the Laurentian one.
A widespread perception in Canadian folklore is that Cartier misunderstood the term "Canada" as the existing proper name of the Iroquois people's entire territory rather than the generic class noun for a town or village. For instance, the Historica Canada's Heritage Minute episode devoted to Cartier's landing at Hochelaga is scripted as having Cartier believe that "Kanata" or "Canada" was the established name of the entire country."Heritage Minutes: Jacques Cartier" . Historica Foundation of Canada. This is not supported by Cartier's own writings, however—in Bref récit, Cartier fully understands the actual meaning of the word ("They call a town Canada").
While the Saint-Lawrence Iroquoian origin for the name Canada is now widely accepted, other theories have been put forth in the past.
Iberian origin theory The most common alternative theory suggested that the name originated when Portuguese or Spanish explorers, having explored the northern part of the continent and unable to find gold and silver, wrote ('nothing here' in Portuguese), or ('Cape Nothing' in Spanish) on that part of their maps. An alternative explanation favoured by philologist Marshall Elliott linked the name to the Spanish word cañada, meaning 'glen' or 'valley'."Further Conjectures as to the Origin of the Name 'Canada'". The New York Times, September 5, 1908.
The earliest iterations of the Spanish "nothing here" theory stated that the explorers made the declaration upon visiting the Bay of Chaleur,Jefferys, Thomas. 1754. The Conduct of the French, with Regard to Nova Scotia. London: T. Jefferys. while later versions left out any identifying geographic detail.
The known Portuguese presence in modern Canadian territory, meanwhile, was in Newfoundland and Labrador. Neither region is located anywhere near Iroquoian territory, and the name Canada does not appear on any Spanish or Portuguese maps of the North American coast that predate Cartier's visit. No name for the Bay of Chaleur is attested at all in Spanish sources from that period, while the only name for Newfoundland attested in Portuguese sources is , after the region's plentiful cod.
In most versions of the Iberian origin theory, the Spanish or Portuguese passed their name on to the Iroquois, who rapidly adopted it in place of their own prior word for a village; however, no historical evidence for any such Iberian-Iroquoian interaction has ever actually been found. Elliott's "valley" theory, conversely, was that the Spanish gave their name for the area directly to Jacques Cartier, who then entirely ignored or passed over the virtually identical Iroquoian word. According to Elliott, Cartier never explicitly stated that there was a direct connection between or as the Iroquoian word for 'village' and Canada as the new name of the entire territory, and never accounted for the spelling difference between and Canada—and thus the Spanish etymology had to be favoured because the spellings matched. Notably, Cartier never wrote of having any awareness of any preexisting Spanish or Portuguese name for the region either, meaning that Elliott's allegation that the derivation was not adequately supported by Cartier's own writing on the matter was also true of his own preferred theory.
Franciscan priest André Thevet claimed that the word derived from , an answer reportedly given by Spaniards in the St. Lawrence Valley area when asked what their purpose was; according to Thevet, the phrase meant that they were seeking landGervais Carpin, Histoire d'un mot: l'ethnonyme "canadien" de 1535-1691. Les Éditions de Septentrion, 1995. . p. 50. or that they were hunting.Olive Dickason, Le mythe du sauvage. Les Éditions de Septentrion, 1993. . p. 298. These words do not actually exist in Spanish, however.
Minor or humorous theories British philologist B. Davies surmised that by the same process which initially saw the First Nations mislabelled as Indians, the country came to be named for the Carnata region of India or that region's Kannada ethnic group;Canadian Naturalist and Geologist, December 1861. p. 432. however, this theory has attracted no significant support from other academics.
In Seneca the word means "follow (me) closely". The theory is that as Jacques Cartier was being directed to the village the inhabitants instructed him to follow them.'Seneca Morphology and Dictionary' p. 55
Additional theories have attributed the name Canada to: a word in an unspecified indigenous language for 'mouth of the country' in reference to the Gulf of St. Lawrence; a Cree word for 'neat or clean';John Maclean, Canadian Savage Folk: The Native Tribes of Canada. C. W. Coates, 1986. a claimed Innu war cry of ""; a shared Cree and Innu word, , which purportedly meant 'without a plan' or 'I don't know';Joseph Graham, Naming the Laurentians: A History of Place Names 'up North'. Les Éditions Main Street, 2005. . p. 65 a short-lived French colony purportedly established by a settler whose surname was Cane; Cartier's description elsewhere in his writings of Labrador as "the land God gave to Cain;" or, to a claim that the early French demanded a "can a day" of spruce beer from the local intendant (a claim easily debunked by the fact that the would have been speaking French, not English).
In their 1983 book The Anglo Guide to Survival in Québec, humourists Josh Freed and Jon Kalina tied the Iberian origin theory to the phrase ('nothing but shit'). No historian or linguist has ever analyzed this explanation as anything more than an obvious joke.Josh Freed and Jon Kalina, The Anglo Guide to Survival in Québec. Eden Press, 1983. . p. 89.
Canadian The demonym "Canadien" or "Canadian" once referred exclusively to the indigenous groups who were native to the territory, traced back to 1664. Its use was extended over time to the French settlers of New France by 1746, and later the English settlers of Upper Canada by 1792. During the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, Francophones in Quebec shifted their primary identity from Canadien to Québécois, leaving the term Canadien/Canadian to represent national rather than distinct ethnic identity.
Colonial usage New France Cartier transcribed the Saint-Lawrence Iroquoian word (pronounced ) as "Canada" and was the first European to use the word to refer not only to the village of Stadacona but also to the neighbouring region and to the Saint Lawrence River, which he called during his second voyage in 1535. By the mid-1500s, European books and maps began referring to this region as Canada.
Canada soon after became the name of a colony in New France that stretched along the St. Lawrence River.MCC. "Le territoire ", in La Nouvelle-France. Ressources françaises, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (France), 1998, retrieved August 2, 2008 The terms "Canada" and "New France" were often used interchangeably during the colonial period.
British North America
After the British conquest of New France (including ceding of the French colony, Canada) in 1763, the colony was renamed the Province of Quebec. Following the American Revolution and the influx of United Empire Loyalists into Quebec, the colony was split on December 26, 1791, into Upper Canada and Lower Canada, sometime being collectively known as "the Canadas", the first time that the name "Canada" was used officially in the British regime.
Some reports from the 1840s suggest that in that era, the word "Canada" was commonly pronounced "Kaugh-na-daugh" rather than its more contemporary pronunciation.
Upper Canada and Lower Canada were merged into one colony, the Province of Canada, in 1841, based on the recommendations of the Durham Report. The former colonies were then known as Canada East and Canada West, and a single legislature was established with equal representation from each. Underpopulated Canada West opposed demands by Canada East for representation by population, but the roles reversed as Canada West's population surpassed that of Canada East. The single colony remained governed in this way until July 1, 1867, often with coalition governments. A new capital city was built at Ottawa, chosen in 1857 by Queen Victoria, and confirmed by the Parliament of the Province of Canada in 1859 and 1860. Ottawa became the seat of government for the Province of Canada in 1866, and then for Canada in 1867.
Selection of the name Canada
At the conferences held in London to determine the form of confederation that would unite the Province of Canada (now Ontario and Quebec), the province of New Brunswick, and the province of Nova Scotia, a delegate from either Nova Scotia or New Brunswick proposed the name Canada in February 1867, and it was unanimously accepted by the other delegates. There appears to have been little discussion,Creighton, Donald. 1956. The Road to Confederation. Houghton Mifflin: Boston; p. 421. though other names were suggested.
Other proposed names While the provinces' delegates spent little time, if any, in settling on Canada as the name for the new country, others proposed a variety of other names:
Anglia – the medieval Latin name for England Albionoria – 'Albion of the north'