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The name Canada has been in use since the earliest European settlement and likely originates from the name of a First Nations settlement. The colonies along the St. Lawrence River were called Upper Canada and Lower Canada until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1840. Upon Confederation in 1867, the name Canada was officially adopted for the new dominion.

Today, Canada is pronounced /ˈkænədə/ in English, /kanada/ in French.

Name origin

The name Canada is believed to have originated from a Huron-Iroquoian word, Kanata meaning "village" or "settlement" or "collection of huts", referring to Stadacona, a settlement on the site of present-day Quebec City. Maps made by early European explorers show that the name River Canada was given to the Ottawa River and the Saint Lawrence River below Montreal. A plausible hypothesis is that the river was named for the village on its banks and the surrounding country for the river used to explore it.

See also: List of place names in Canada of aboriginal origin.

An apocryphal explanation of the origin of the name is that Spanish cartographers, not having explored the northern part of the continent, wrote Acá nada ("nothing here") on that part of their maps.

Selection of the name Canada

At the conferences held in London to determine the form of confederation that would unite the Province of Canada (now Ontario and Quebec), the Province of New Brunswick and the Province of Nova Scotia, a delegate from either Nova Scotia or New Brunswick proposed the name Canada in February 1867, and it was unanimously accepted by the other delegates. There appears to have been little discussion. (1)

Adoption of 'Dominion'/'Dominion of Canada'

During the Charlottetown Conference of 1864 to discuss political union, Sir John A. Macdonald, who later became Canada's first prime minister, talked of 'founding a great British monarchy, in connection with the British Empire.' Officials at the Colonial Office in London, however, opposed this potentially 'premature' and 'pretentious' reference for a new country. They were also wary of antagonizing the United States which had emerged from the American Civil War as a formidable military power with unsettled grievances because of British support for the Confederate cause.

So, the term Dominion was chosen to indicate Canada's status as a self-governing colony of the British Empire (the first time it would be so used in reference to a country) while still acknowledging political ties. As explained in the article on dominion, this was an old British term for a type of government used in New England, and presumably resurrected for new purposes.

This was formalised in 1867 through Canadian Confederation: the British North America Act (Section 3) created "One Dominion under the Name of Canada," or "une seule et même Puissance sous le nom de Canada" in French (which until 1982 had no constitutional equality with English as a text). The word "dominion" in "Dominion of Canada" is usually translated with the English loan-word dominion in French, but French really has no equivalent.

The term "dominion," as well as Canada's motto, are commonly attributed to Psalms 72:8 and Zechariah 9:10 of the Bible: "He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth."

Usage of 'Canada'

Until the 1930s, the term Dominion of Canada was commonly used to identify the country. As Canada increasingly acquired political authority and autonomy from the United Kingdom, the federal government increasingly began using the name Canada on official state documents and treaties. The Canada Act 1982 refers merely to Canada and, as such, is the current official shortform (as well as bilingual) name in use. This was also reflected later in 1982 with the renaming of the national holiday from Dominion Day to Canada Day.

Canada is also the official longform name most commonly used. Some contend, however, that usage of the term Dominion of Canada is still proper and is the country's 'official' longform name. While the Canada Act 1982 does not use the term Dominion, neither does it amend the earlier usage. However, the BNA Act's declaration that the country is a "One Dominion under the Name of Canada" has also been intrepreted to mean that the BNA Act declares the name of the country to be simply Canada. Indeed, nowhere in the 1867 Act does the phrase "Dominion of Canada" or "Dominion government" ever appear. In any event, since 1967, the Dominion of Canada or Dominion are rarely used to distinguish the federal government from the provinces or, in historical works, to distinguish the (pre-1867) Province of Canada from the (post-1867) Dominion of Canada.

Other proposed names

While the provinces' delegates spent little time, if any, in settling on 'Canada' as the name for the new country, others proposed a variety of other names.

• Albion
• Albionoria - "Albion of the north"
• Borealia – from 'borealis', the Latin word for 'northern'; compare with Australia
• Cabotia – in honour of Italian explorer John Cabot, who explored the eastern coast of Canada for England
• Colonia
• Efisga - an acronym of "English, French, Irish, Scottish, German, Aboriginal"
• Hochelaga – an old name for Montreal
• Mesopelagia - "land between the seas"
• Norland
• Superior
• Tuponia - derived from 'The United Provinces of North America'
• Ursalia - "place of bears"
• Vesperia - "land of the evening star"
• Victorialand – in honour of Queen Victoria

Walter Bagehot of The Economist newspaper in London argued that the new nation should be called 'Northland' or 'Anglia' instead of Canada. (2)

On these names, the statesman Thomas D'Arcy McGee commented, "Now I would ask any honourable member of the House how he would feel if he woke up some fine morning and found himself, instead of a Canadian, a Tuponian or a Hochelagander?"

Sources

• (1) Donald Creighton. The Road to Confederation, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1956, p. 421
• (2) Christopher Moore. 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal. McClelland and Stewart, Toronto, 1997, p. 214

• Canadian history