424 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



while the remainder of the word is obviously our familiar combination -A-KA'DI- 

 (K), already fully explained (page 380). Thus the full form of the name would 

 be SËGÙBÛN-WA-KA'DI-K, meaning literally GROUND NUTS-THEIR-OC- 

 CURRENCE-PLACE. Such an origin, it will be noticed, is in perfect accord 

 with the early recorded forms of the name, as given above; and I think there is no 

 question whatsoever as to the correctness of this interpretation. 



The forms of the name as given by Gesner, Dawson, Hardy, and Rand all 

 involve one anomaly, that the root SEGUBUN contains no trace of that preliminary 

 CH sound of the early French forms, which persists in our modern spelling and 

 pronunciation of the name. That the preliminary sound was originally CH and not 

 simply S is well attested by early forms of the IViicmac word for Ground-Nuts. Thus, 

 Father Biard, in his Relation of 1613, describes them with their Micmac name, which 

 he gives as CHIQUEBI (Thwaites' Jesuit Relations, HI, 259), while Denys, in 1672, 

 gave their name as CHICAMINS {Description, II, 354). Thus it seems clear that 

 the sound in question (i.e. CH), was originally in the word; but whether the Micmacs 

 themselves have dropped it with time in favour of the S, or whether our English 

 authorities have a less acute ear for the presumably very slight influence of the H 

 in the word, I cannot at present tell. I find the same phenomenon in a good many 

 other Indian words, — that the sound which the earlier French caught and recorded 

 as SH we catch and record as S. Probably the Indian pronunciation, as well as our 

 own sound-values for the letters, is slowly changing. 



We consider now the appropriateness of the name to the place. The Ground- 

 Nut or Indian Potato, a twining plant of the Pea Family, called by Botanists Apios 

 tuberosa, had high importance to the Indians because it produces strings of under- 

 ground edible tubers much resembling small potatoes, these forming a palatable and 

 nutritious food. As to their particular abundance along the Shubenacadie River, 

 however, I have no information, aside from the statements of Gesner and of Hardy's 

 Indian above cited, though such statements are too general and too much in evident 

 support of an explanation, to have much value. It is, however, a fact that the 

 plant is specially partial to intervales, of which a great many, I believe, occur along 

 this river, especially its lower course. But herein a problem in etymological- 

 botanical correlation still awaits a local student. 



Other Explanations of the Name. Of these I have found three. In A 

 General Description of Nova Scotia, published anonymously at Halifax in 1825, 86, 

 we read, — "the Shubenacadie. . . .called by way of pre-minence [sic] Shubenacadie, 

 or the River of Acadia, (Shuben being the Indian name for a river) . . . . " It is 

 possible that this statement rests upon a supposition that SHUBEN is identical with 

 the Micmac SEBO, which does mean RIVER; but aside from the remoteness of the 

 resemblance, the word SEBO is never used by the Micmacs in combination in this 

 way. 



Again, Father Vetromile, in his work The Abnakis and their History, 45 (quoted 

 more fully on pages 418 and 443 of this paper), connects the termination -ACADIE 

 with a Micmac root ACADEM supposed to mean DWELL, or VILLAGE; and he 

 makes the prefix SHUBEN mean RIVER, thus finding in SHUBEN-ACADIE the 

 meaning RIVER WHERE WE DWELL, or VILLAGE-RIVER. Herein, however, 

 we have obviously only a melange of guess and imperfect recollection of earlier 

 writings, without any such foundation as the other evidence bearing upon the word 

 possesses. 



Again, I have been told by Mr. J. H. Waddell of South Maitland, a place near 

 the mouth of the River, that Shubenacadie is locally believed to mean ABUNDANCE 

 OF FISH, in description of one of its prominent features. Herein we have evidently 

 an example of familiarization of ideas in place-nomenclature, analogous to the fre- 



