WHAT'S IN A NAME? 



45 



valuable to the geologist or the antiquarian as fossils, hatchets or 

 potteries. 



Furthermore, local names not un frequently throw valuable light 

 on the ethnological composition of a people. For instance, when 

 we learn that the highest summit in the Isle of Man is called Sna- 

 fell, we recognise at once the descriptive character of the name, but, 

 when we discover that the name Snafell is a true Norse word, that 

 it serves moreover for the name of a mountain in Norway, and of 

 another in Iceland, we find ourselves in presence of the historical 

 fact that the Isle of Man was, for centuries, a dependency of the 

 Scandinavian crown, having been conquered and colonized by the 

 Norwegian Vikings, who also peopled Iceland. 



In truth, many nations have left no other records of their share 

 in the making up of a race outside the hills, the valleys, the rivers, 

 the villages they named, and where they sojourned. The Celtic, the 

 Iberic, the Teutonic, the Scandinavian and the Sclavonian races 

 have thus, and for the most part thus only, made known to us their 

 migrations, their conquests and their defeats, their civilization, the 

 state of agriculture, the progress of the arts of construction, and 

 even their religious beliefs. But one will readily understand how 

 hard a task it must be to decipher Old-World names, mostly derived 

 from obscure or unknown languages which have suffered more or 

 less from the phonetic changes of perhaps twenty centuries, when 

 in the New World, where civilization and nomenclature are both 

 modern, we meet with such a puzzling and interesting problem as 

 the derivation of Canada. * 



Many names upon our maps supply us with traces of the history 

 of nations that have left no other memorials, written annals or monu- 



*Three versions have been given of the origin of the name, none of which 

 is satisfactory, to say the least. The first is that early Spanish navigators ex- 

 claimed on landing upon the then unpromising shores of this country: " Aca 

 iVo<fo "^Nothing here — hence the name Canada. An objection to this etymo- 

 logy is that the Spanish " Aca " is not ' here,' but rather ' hither,' while ' aqui ' 

 means here or hereabouts. Moreover, as no Spaniard settled there and then, 

 unless written down at the time, the expression would hardly have been pre- 

 served, and the appellation being neither descriptive nor historical, we may 

 dismiss it as thoroughly childish. 



The second etymology suggested is from the Indian words ' Kan '= 

 mouth, and 'ada'^^a country. Of course this appellation might have fitted 

 the great expanse of water which is the door to the inland settlements, the 

 St. Lawrence, and have been extended to the whole country. 



The third etymology, the one commonly accepted, would be derived from 

 another Indian word : 'Kannatha '=a collection of huts. No doubt the last 

 two derivations could be defended by a few likely arguments, but they lack 

 the authority of written tradition which is claimed for a fourth version. 



