[ganong] INDIAN PLACE-NOMENCLATURE 423 



usage that I have found, (though there must be earUer), is in a document of 1737, 

 which reads CHICOBENAKEDY {Nova Scotia Archives, II, 216) while another 

 of 1754 has CHIGABENACADY, and one of 1759 has CHIBENACCADIE (Mur- 

 doch, op. cit. II, 236, 374), all three of the forms being evidently strongly influenced 

 by the French forms if not directly derived from French sources. Meantime, 

 however, in 1749, an aberrant form had appeared, destined to become very important, 

 and that was the SHUBEN ACCADA on the fine large Map of Nova Scotia and New 

 England made by Charles Morris, afterwards Surveyor General of Nova Scotia 

 (the map published recently with the Journal of Captain William Pole, New York, 

 1896). Morris' form looks like a phonetic spelling of the French CHEBENACADIE 

 which was presumably then coming into use in the official speech of the English 

 rulers of Nova Scotia. Whatever its origin, Morris retained it upon his later maps, 

 in the form SHUBENACCADA, as witness the two maps of 1761 published in the 

 Report on Canadian Archives, for 1904, opposite page 300. It was of course from 

 Morris that Morse took his. form SHUBENACCADY in his well-known Report of 

 1783 {Report on Canadian Archives, for 1884, xxx). Morse's form must soon have 

 become altered to SHUBENACADIE, which I find first in 1825, in a place mentioned 

 below; and since that time it has become the invariable and standard form of the 

 name. Thus our modern spelling of the word has been derived from the French 

 CHIBENACADIE, itself an abbreviation of CHIGABENACADIE, through the 

 apparently phonetic form SHUBEN ACCADA of Morris. Somewhere in the 

 transferences it has experienced also a change of pronunciation, for all analogy with 

 other words involving the same roots would make its aboriginal, and French, pronun- 

 ciation CHIBENACA'DIE, while in our day it is invariably SHUBENA'CADIE. 

 A precisely similar phenomenon is found in other names as earlier noted (page 378). 

 To one familiar with these words, the correct pronunciation of all the series of abori- 

 ginal -AKA'DIK names becomes very difficult, for one's invariable habit is to accent 

 the wrong syllable. 



Analysis of the Word. All considerations point to an Indian origin of the 

 name. The earliest explanation I have found is given by Gesner, in 1849, in his 

 Industrial Resources of Nova Scotia, 2, 31, where he says, — "In the Micmac Indian 

 dialect âkâde signifies a place .... The Shubenacadie is called by the natives Saagaa- 

 benâcâde, a place where their favourite root, the Sagaaban, grows; thus the origin 

 of the term Shubenacadie now applied to the river, where those roots were formerly 

 very abundant." Again, Dawson relates that in his own boyhood a Micmac patri- 

 arch explained to him that the word was derived from SGABUN meaning GROUND- 

 NUTS, and ACAD IE meaning PLENTY HERE; and he says that later this explan- 

 ation was fully confirmed by Rand, who gave him the name as SEGUBBUNA- 

 KADDY, composed of SEGUBBUN meaning A GROUND-NUT, with A or WA, 

 an adjectival ending, and KADY or CADIE, meaning REGION, FIELD, GROUND, 

 LAND, or PLACE, making the entire word mean "the place or region of ground- 

 nuts, or the place in which these are to be found in abundance" {Acadian Geology, 

 2nd edition, 1868 1-3). Again, the same explanation, in substance, was cited 

 quite independently in 1869, by Campbell Hardy whose Indian told him the name 

 was SEEGÉEBENACADIE, because "plent ywild potatoes —segéeben —once grew 

 here," while ACADIE means "where you find 'em" {Forest Life in Acadie, 1, 2). 

 Later Rand himself gave the name as SÈGÙBÛNÂÂKÀDE or SËGÛBÛNÂKÀDE, 

 meaning WHERE-GROUND-NUTS ABOUND, or INDIAN-POTATO FIELD 

 {First Reading Book, 101; English- Micmac Dictionary, 235). Father Pacifique 

 writes the word SEGEPENEGATIG, in his Micmac Almanac of 1902, 22. With 

 such full data the analysis of the word becomes easy. Rand gives, as the name of 

 the Ground-Nut or Indian Potato, the form SËGUBUN {Dictionary cited, 125), 



Sec. I and II. 1915—28 



