Portion of a 1643 map showing the name Canada
15 April 2024
The name Canada comes from Huron-Iroquois kanata (kaná:taʔ), meaning town or settlement, entering English through French. The original town in question was the Iroquois village of Stadaconé, the site of the present-day Quebec City.
French-Breton explorer Jacques Cartier reached Stadaconé in July 1534, taking the chief, Donnacona, and several others hostage, later releasing them on the condition that the chief’s two sons return to France with him. Cartier learned the word kanata from these two, and returned to the town, with the two men, the following year. Cartier and his crew wintered in the village, where the inhabitants saved most of them from dying of scurvy. In return, Cartier again seized the Donnacona, the two sons, and seven others and returned to France with them. All of Indigenous hostages died in France. Cartier returned to the site in 1543 to find it had been destroyed by some unknown enemy.
Cartier recorded the name Canada in his 1545 account of his voyages:
Et à la fin desdictes ysles, ya vne fort belle terre basse, plaine de aliant vers ledićt Canada, le trauers dudićt cap chuiron [?] trois licues ya de perfond cent brasses & plus.
(And at the end of the said islands, there is a very beautiful low land, a plain of land leading towards the land of Canada, the path of the land of Cape Chuiron three licues there is a hundred fathoms deep and more.)
The name Canada appears in English in 1568 in a translation of priest and explorer André Thevet’s account of his voyage to South America in 1555. In it, Thevet refers to the French colony to the north:
For bicause that this countrey lying in the Northe was discouered in oure time, first by Sebastian Babat [i.e., Cabot] an Englisheman, and then by Iames Quartier a Briton [i.e., Jacques Cartier, a Breton], beyng well séene in nauigation, who toke vpon him the voyage at the commaundemente of the kyng of France, Francisce the first, I think it good therfore somewhat to write, the which semeth to me most worthie to be noted: although that accordyng to the order of our voyage homewardes, it ought to go before the next Chapter. Moreouer, that which moueth me so to doe, is that I haue not séene any that hathe treated otherwise, although to my iudgement the thyng doth merite it, and that I haue surely learned it of the sayd Iames Quartier. This lande being almoste vnder the Pole artike, is ioyned towarde the Weast to Florida, and to the Ilandes of Perou, and since is coasted by the west toward Baccalles, of which we haue spoken. The which place I think be the same, that those which lately haue discouered and named Canada, as it happeneth many times that some will giue name to that whiche is out of others knowledge, the which toward the east extendeth to the sea called Hyperbores, & on the other side to a mayne lande called Campestra de Berga, to the Southeast ioyning to this countrey.
Cartier’s account was translated into English in 1580 by John Florio, who translated it from an Italian edition of Cartier’s book. The passage uses the name Canada to refer to Stadaconé and references the taking of the Indigenous hostages:
We named the sayde Gulfe Saint Laurence hys Baie. The twelfth of the sayde month we went from the sayd S. Laurence hys Bay, or Gulfe, sayling Westwarde, and came to finde a Cape of maine lande on the Northside of the Baye, that runneth from the saide Sainte Laurence his Baie about fiue and twentie leagues West and by South. And of the two wilde men whiche we toke in our former voyage, it was tolde vs that this was of the Bande towarde the South, and that there was an Ilande, on the Southerlye parte of whiche is the waye to goe to Honguedo where the yeare before we hadde taken them in Canada, and that two dayes iourney from the sayde Cape, an Ilande began the Kingdome of Siguenay, in the lande Northwarde extending towarde Canada.
A glossary at the end of the book includes this entry:
a Towne canada
Beginning in the 1550s, French maps started using Canada as the name for the region around what would become Quebec City and started calling the St. Lawrence River the grande rivière du Canada. The colony of New France would be conquered by the English in the French and Indian War (Seven Year’s War), 1754–63, and in 1791 the English officially created the colonies of Upper Canada and Lower Canada, present-day Ontario and Quebec. The Province of Canada was created in 1841, uniting the two colonies, and in 1867 the Dominion of Canada was created, including at first Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, and eventually the other provinces and territories.
That’s how an Indigenous word for town or settlement came become the name of a region and then an entire country.
An alternative and highly dubious origin that is sometimes claimed is that the name comes from the Portuguese acá nada (nothing here), which was so noted by early Portuguese explorers sailing the St. Lawrence River. Other than the vague similarity in sound and form, no evidence for this claim exists.
Sources:
Cartier, Jacques. Brief Recit & Succincte Naration de la Nauigation Faicte es Ysles de Canada, Hochelage & Saguenay & Autres. Paris: P. Roffet & A. Le Clerc, 1545, 8–9. Gale Primary Sources: Sabin Americana.
———. A Shorte and Briefe Narration of the Two Nauigations and Discoueries to the Northweast Partes Called New Fraunce. John Florio, trans. London: H. Bynneman, 1580, 31, 80. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2017, s.v. Canada, n.1.
Rayburn, Alan. Oxford Dictionary of Canadian Place Names. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford UP Canada, 1999.
Thevet, André. The New Found Worlde. Thomas Hacket, trans. London: Henrie Bynneman, 1568, 122–23. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Image credit: Jean Boisseau, 1643, “Description de la Nouvelle France.” Library of Congress. Public domain image.