Name of Canada
While a variety of theories have been postulated for the name of Canada, its origin is now accepted as coming from the Laurentian language word kanata, meaning 'village' or 'settlement'. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona. Cartier later used the word Canada to refer not only to that particular village but to the entire area subject to Donnacona ; by 1545, European books and maps had begun referring to this small region along the Saint Lawrence River as Canada.
From the 16th to the early 18th century, Canada referred to the part of New France that lay along the Saint Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada. These two colonies were collectively named the Canadas until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841.
Upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the legal name for the new country at the London Conference, and the word Dominion was conferred as the country's title. By the 1950s, the term Dominion of Canada was no longer used by the United Kingdom, which considered Canada a "Realm of the Commonwealth". The government of Louis St. Laurent ended the practice of using Dominion in the statutes of Canada in 1951.
The Canada Act 1982, which brought the constitution of Canada fully under Canadian control, referred only to Canada. Later that year, the name of the national holiday was changed from Dominion Day to Canada Day. The term Dominion was used to distinguish the federal government from the provincial ones, though after the Second World War the term federal had replaced dominion.
Etymology
The name Canada is now generally accepted as originating from the St. Lawrence Iroquoian word kanata, meaning 'village' or 'settlement'. Related translations include 'land' or 'town', with subsequent terminologies meaning 'cluster of dwellings' or 'collection of huts'. This explanation is historically documented in Jacques Cartier's Bref récit et succincte narration de la navigation faite en MDXXXV et MDXXXVI.Although the Laurentian language, which was spoken by the inhabitants of St. Lawrence Valley settlements such as Stadacona and Hochelaga in the 16th century, is now extinct, it was closely related to other dialects of the Iroquoian languages, such as the Oneida and Mohawk languages. Related cognates meaning 'town' include nekantaa, ganataje, and iennekanandaa in the Mohawk, Onondaga, and Seneca languages respectively. Prior to archaeological confirmation that the St. Lawrence Iroquois were a separate people from the Mohawk, most sources specifically linked the name's origin to the Mohawk word instead of the Laurentian one.
A widespread perception in Canadian folklore is that Cartier misunderstood the term "Canada" as the existing proper name of the Iroquois people's entire territory rather than the generic class noun for a town or village. For instance, the Historica Canada's Heritage Minute episode devoted to Cartier's landing at Hochelaga is scripted as having Cartier believe that "Kanata" or "Canada" was the established name of the entire country. This is not supported by Cartier's own writings, however—in Bref récit, Cartier fully understands the actual meaning of the word.
While the Saint-Lawrence Iroquoian origin for the name Canada is now widely accepted, other theories have been put forth in the past.
Iberian origin theory
The most common alternative theory suggested that the name originated when Portuguese or Spanish explorers, having explored the northern part of the continent and unable to find gold and silver, wrote cá nada, acá nada, aqui nada or el cabo de nada on that part of their maps. An alternative explanation favoured by philologist Marshall Elliott linked the name to the Spanish word cañada, meaning 'glen' or 'valley'.The earliest iterations of the Spanish "nothing here" theory stated that the explorers made the declaration upon visiting the Bay of Chaleur, while later versions left out any identifying geographic detail.
The known Portuguese presence in modern Canadian territory, meanwhile, was in Newfoundland and Labrador. Neither region is located anywhere near Iroquoian territory, and the name Canada does not appear on any Spanish or Portuguese maps of the North American coast that predate Cartier's visit. No name for the Bay of Chaleur is attested at all in Spanish sources from that period, while the only name for Newfoundland attested in Portuguese sources is Terra Nova do Bacalhau, after the region's plentiful cod.
In most versions of the Iberian origin theory, the Spanish or Portuguese passed their name on to the Iroquois, who rapidly adopted it in place of their own prior word for a village; however, no historical evidence for any such Iberian-Iroquoian interaction has ever actually been found. Elliott's "valley" theory, conversely, was that the Spanish gave their name for the area directly to Jacques Cartier, who then entirely ignored or passed over the virtually identical Iroquoian word. According to Elliott, Cartier never explicitly stated that there was a direct connection between canada or kanata as the Iroquoian word for 'village' and Canada as the new name of the entire territory, and never accounted for the spelling difference between kanata and Canada—and thus the Spanish etymology had to be favoured because the spellings matched. Notably, Cartier never wrote of having any awareness of any preexisting Spanish or Portuguese name for the region either, meaning that Elliott's allegation that the kanata derivation was not adequately supported by Cartier's own writing on the matter was also true of his own preferred theory.
Franciscan priest André Thevet claimed that the word derived from segnada Canada, an answer reportedly given by Spaniards in the St. Lawrence Valley area when asked what their purpose was; according to Thevet, the phrase meant that they were seeking land or that they were hunting. These words do not actually exist in Spanish, however.
Minor or humorous theories
British philologist B. Davies surmised that by the same process which initially saw the First Nations mislabelled as Indians, the country came to be named for the Carnata region of India or that region's Kannada ethnic group; however, this theory has attracted no significant support from other academics.Additional theories have attributed the name "Canada" to: a word in an unspecified indigenous language for 'mouth of the country' in reference to the Gulf of St. Lawrence; a Cree word for 'neat or clean'; a claimed Innu war cry of "kan-na-dun, Kunatun"; a shared Cree and Innu word, p'konata, which purportedly meant 'without a plan' or 'I don't know'; a short-lived French colony purportedly established by a settler whose surname was Cane; Jacques Cartier's description elsewhere in his writings of Labrador as "the land God gave to Cain;" or, to a claim that the early French habitants demanded a "can a day" of spruce beer from the local intendant.
In their 1983 book The Anglo Guide to Survival in Québec, humourists Josh Freed and Jon Kalina tied the Iberian origin theory to the phrase nada mas caca. No historian or linguist has ever analyzed this explanation as anything more than an obvious joke.
Canadian
The demonym "Canadien" or "Canadian" once referred exclusively to the indigenous groups who were native to the territory, traced back to 1664. Its use was extended over time to the French settlers of New France by 1746, and later the English settlers of Upper Canada by 1792.Colonial usage
New France
European explorer Jacques Cartier transcribed the Saint-Lawrence Iroquoian word as "Canada" and was the first European to use the word to refer not only to the village of Stadacona but also to the neighbouring region and to the Saint Lawrence River, which he called rivière de Canada during his second voyage in 1535. By the mid-1500s, European books and maps began referring to this region as Canada.Canada soon after became the name of a colony in New France that stretched along the St. Lawrence River. The terms "Canada" and "New France" were often used interchangeably during the colonial period.
British North America
After the British conquest of New France in 1763, the colony was renamed the Province of Quebec. Following the American Revolution and the influx of United Empire Loyalists into Quebec, the colony was split on December 26, 1791, into Upper and Lower Canada, sometime being collectively known as "The Canadas", the first time that the name "Canada" was used officially in the British regime.Some reports from the 1840s suggest that in that era, the word "Canada" was commonly pronounced "Kaugh-na-daugh" rather than its more contemporary pronunciation.
Upper and Lower Canada were merged into one colony, the Province of Canada, in 1841, based on the recommendations of the Durham Report. The former colonies were then known as Canada East and Canada West, and a single legislature was established with equal representation from each. Underpopulated Canada West opposed demands by Canada East for representation by population, but the roles reversed as Canada West's population surpassed the east's. The single colony remained governed in this way until July 1, 1867, often with coalition governments. A new capital city was being built at Ottawa, chosen in 1857 by Queen Victoria, and became a national capital.