278 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



in this name has the sense of a topographical term, as in PATICAKE and BADKICK 

 for example, but has its broad descriptive sense, as in PETITCODIAC; that is, it 

 does not describe any actual visible turn in the land or the water, but the fact that 

 a reverse turn must be made in order to enter the place. An English sailor might 

 well describe it as "Turn-back Harbour." It is quite possible that originally the 

 word had additional syllables, or at least a terminal K or EK, the usual locative 

 making the word a place name. Hence it was probably PETEK-OOK, or, in view 

 of the tendency of the Micmacs to soften the K after another K sound (page 264 of the 

 present paper), PETEKOOCH. No doubt the word belonged originally to the 

 Harbour and its extension Dunk River, and was extended later by the whites to the 

 Bay. An Indian Island in the Harbour suggests a place of Indian resort, and the 

 centre of the application of the name. 



No other explanation of the origin of Bedeque has been published, so far as I 

 can find. 



We may summarize accordingly, by saying that BEDEQUE is a corruption 

 under influence of French suggestion, from a Micmac Indian word which was in all 

 probability PETEK-OOK or PETEK-OOCH, meaning BACK TURN-PLACE, or 

 more generally THE PLACE THAT LIES ON THE BACKWARD TURN,. in 

 description of the position of the Harbour in relation to Indian travel along the shore 

 from the eastward. 



An incidental point of interest in connection with the nomenclature of Bedeque 

 Bay should here receive mention. On Holland's map of the Island of 1765, and most 

 others since then, the Bay is called HALIFAX or Bedeque Bay, while its eastern 

 extension is called DUNK River, and its western extension is called either SAN- 

 BURY (on Holland and some that follow him) or SUNBURY Cove. These names 

 all go back clearly to this great map of Holland's and were evidently given by him. 

 Now I have been told by Mr. C. R. Dickie, the obliging Postmaster of Muddy Creek, 

 near Sunbury Cove, that this name SANBURY or SUNBURY is locally considered 

 a corruption of SOUANBERRY, from the Micmac SOUAN, meaning CRANBERRY 

 and the English word BERRY, in description of the many cranberries on the marshes 

 there. But I am sure this explanation is erroneous. It seems wholly improbable 

 that so hybrid a compound of Micmac-English could have come into use as a place 

 name, such an origin being wholly without analogy in all the place-nomenclature of 

 these Provinces, while even if it had, a much more probable familiarization of SOUAN 

 would be SWAN, making the word SWANBERRY, just as SOUANKIK (or SEE- 

 WANKIK) meaning CRANBERRY PLACE, on the River Saint John, has been 

 adopted into English as SWAN CREEK (these Transactions, II, 1896, ii 274). 

 inside, however, from this point, there is good reason for the derivation of Sunbury 

 from a very different source. It was in Captain Holland's day the custom for the 

 government surveyors to name places for officials then prominent in England. The 

 great Atlantic Neptune, the remarkable collection of charts supervised by DesBarres, 

 abounds in such names, very few of which, however, have survived. Now a noble- 

 man prominent in English public life (Secretary of State), at the time Holland was 

 giving his names, was the Earl of HALIFAX, the same for whom the capital of Nova 

 Scotia was named. Further, the family name of this Earl was George DUNK 

 Montague, thus explaining the association of HALIFAX and DUNK at Bedeque. 

 But further yet, he was also Viscount SUNBURY (Educational Review, St. John, XV, 

 1902, 160; and Murdoch's Nova Scotia, II, 150), in view of which fact we can hardly 

 doubt that the association of Sunbury with Dunk and Halifax at Bedeque has this 

 origin. As to the spelling SANBURY, that 1 take to be simply a slight error either 



