198 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
The history of the word, then, seems clear. The aboriginal O-WOK-UN- 
CHICH’, was adopted by the early French voyageurs as WAGANSIS. This was 
abbreviated by the English lumbermen into WAGAN, our present form. The 
adoption of the form WAGAN for this stream released the older WAGANSIS, and 
that name very naturally became transferred to the branch of Grand River, which, 
as it happens, is a smaller stream than the WAGAN, though this use was probably 
not aboriginal. 
This mention of Grand River recalls the fact that the name Grand River occurs 
several times in the Maritime Provinces, and always, I believe, in connection with a 
portage route, and usually, if not always, an inheritance from the French. In most 
of these cases the name Grand is conspicuously inappropriate as a descriptive name, 
but the presence of a portage gives the clue to the reason for its application; it is 
evidently used in the same sense as in the common phrase Grand Chemin, which 
means a Highway. It was because these streams were the old highways of travel 
that they were named Grande Riviére by the French, though often very in- 
significent in size. 
OTHER INTERPRETATIONS OF THE Name.—A very different explanation was 
given by Van Velden on his map, for he names the brook AVAGANEITZ OR LITTLE 
KNIFE, and this is copied on some later maps, and in a number of books. It is 
quite obvious that Van Velden mistook the word O-WOK’-UN for WOK-UN, the 
common Micmac word for KNIFE (Rand, English-Micmac Dictionary, 151) the 
diminutive of which, WOK-UN-CHICH’, would mean LITTLE KNIFE. But 
against this meaning, and in favour of a derivation from O-WOK’-UN meaning 
PORTAGE, are three lines of evidence, viz., the occurrence of the preliminary A 
in Van Velden’s own form, which would have no meaning on his interpretation, but 
belongs in O-WOK-UN: the testimony of the living Indians: and the obvious 
appropriateness of the latter word in face of the absence of any reason for the former, 
and indeed any analogy in Indian place nomenclature elsewhere. 
Summary.—The word WAGAN is a corruption, through the French, from the 
Miemae O-WOK-UN-CHICH’, meaning LITTLE PORTAGE, with BROOK 
understood, and therefore LITTLE PORTAGE BROOK. WAGANSIS is an 
earlier form of this name, transferred in recent times, to the tiny brook so called 
on our maps. 
Other Aboriginal Acadian Place Names Containing Roots Identical With 
Those in Wagan. 
OWOKUN, the aboriginal Micmac name for Portage River, Miramichi, (flowing 
into the North-west Miramichi at its northeasternmost angle from the north), given 
by Rand as OWOKUN, meaning PORTAGE RIVER (Reader, 97). This is obvi- 
ously the pure common-noun form of the word without even the usual locative 
suffix. This river leads up to an old portage, the principal one between the Mira- 
michi and Nepisiguit, described in these Transactions, XII, 1906, ii, 99. 
Furthermore, Gordon Brook, the branch of Nepisiguit up which the portage 
route ran from that side, is still called by the Miemacs by the same name O-WOK’- 
UN, as I know for myself (these Transactions, TI, 1896, ii, 256). 
Furthermore, the same name OW OKUN, cie to Rand (Reader, 96) is 
applied to Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, and said by him to mean A CROSSING OVER 
PLACE, obviously in allusion to the old portage route which extended from this 
place to Chignecto Basin by way of River Hebert. 
