Prince Edward Island

Green Gables House, Cavendish, Prince Edward Island. The farmhouse that inspired the 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Montgomery. Canadian law requires a reference to the novel in every article about the island (not really, it just seems that way). A white clapboard house with a green gabled roof.

Green Gables House, Cavendish, Prince Edward Island. The farmhouse that inspired the 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Montgomery. Canadian law requires a reference to the novel in every article about the island (not really, it just seems that way). A white clapboard house with a green gabled roof.

2 July 2021

Prince Edward Island is the smallest in area of the Canadian provinces and territories. It is an island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, lying just off the northern and eastern coasts of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Its Mi’kmaq name is Epekwitk (cradled on the waves), which is often transliterated as Abegweit.

The French dubbed it Île Saint-Jean, and until 1799 it was known to the English settler-colonists as St. John’s Island. But in that year, it was renamed after Edward, the son of King George III, who commanded British forces in Nova Scotia from 1794–98, when a fall from a horse forced his return to England for recovery. He was subsequently created Duke of Kent, and Strathearn and returned to North America in command of all British forces there. He also subsequently fathered a daughter who would become Queen Victoria.

The following is a 25 January 1799 letter from Edward thanking the government and people of what would soon become Prince Edward Island for petitioning the king to rename the island in his honor. Edward only obliquely refers to the “honour,” but when it was later published in the Sun newspaper, the editors noted that the island had been renamed after him:

To His Excellency Major-General EDMUND FANNING, L.L.D. Lieutenant-Governor, &c. &c. in and over His Majesty’s Island of St. John, and His Majesty’s Council and House of Assembly, &c. &c. &c.

“GENTLEMEN,

“I am highly flattered by the distinguished Honour conferred upon me in your Address of the 26th of November, 1798, for which I have to request that you will accept of my best Thanks.

“Nothing could be more gratifying to my feelings, than to receive the assurance of your devoted attachment to His Majesty, and the whole of his Family; nor could any thing be more pleasing personally to myself, than to learn that you were so good as to feel for the accident which occasioned my departure from North America.

“I feel as I ought to do, the very handsome manner in which you are pleased to speak of the attention I was enabled (in the line of my Profession), to pay to the concerns of the Island to which you belong; and believe me, that I shall ever feel great pride in the recollection of the public testimony you have thus given of your approbation of my Services while in the Command of your District.

“I shall conclude, Gentlemen, with offering my warmest acknowledgements for the good wishes so handsomely expressed at the end of your Address, and desiring you to believe that I shall ever take the warmest interest in everything that concerns the Island of St. John’s.

“EDWARD,
“Lieutenant-General, late commanding the Forces in Nova Scotia and its Dependencies.

“London, January 25, 1799.”

N.B. The above Island has since been honoured by the name of Prince Edward Island.

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Sources:

Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn. “Letter.” The Sun (London), 12 October 1799, 1. Gale Primary Sources: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection.

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.

Pearce, Margaret Wickens. Coming Home to Indigenous Place Names in Canada (map). Canadian-American Center, University of Maine, 2017.

Rayburn, Alan. Oxford Dictionary of Canadian Place Names. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford UP Canada, 1999.

Photo credit: Markus Gregory http://ggrexy.zenfolio.com/ , 2014. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Ontario

287c_Ontario.jpg

1631 French map, titled Description du Pais des Hurons (Description of the Land of the Hurons) of the region between Lakes Huron and Ontario. In the upper left are portions of Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. The circular lake on the right that is labeled Lac Ouentarenk is now known as Lake Simcoe. In the lower right is a portion of Lake Ontario, labeled Partie du Lac Ontario. The location of present-day Toronto is on the depicted shoreline.

1 July 2021

Ontario is the name of one of the Great Lakes of North America and of the most populous province of Canada. The name is of Iroquoian origin, but which language and, therefore, its original meaning are uncertain. What is clear is that it was originally the name of the lake and became a name for the territory in English usage.

Ontario is a French spelling of the name. Some sources give the origin as the Kanienʼkéha (Mohawk) õtaríyo, or õtar (lake, river, waterway) + iyo (beautiful). Other sources give the origin as the Huron ontare (lake). And yet others say it means rocks near the water, referring to the Niagara Escarpment, through which the Niagara River flows, producing the spectacular Niagara Falls on its way into the lake’s southern end.

The French name appears on a map bearing the date 1631 (pictured), although the “3” has been overwritten with a “5,” giving a date of 1651. The current best estimate is that the map was drawn between 1639–48, with minor revisions after 1650, hence the changed date. A date from early in this span would make this map the earliest known use of the French name. The next candidate for earliest known use would be in the Jesuit Relations of 1641–42, which recounts the travels of missionaries to the region:

Du premier bourg de la Nation Neutre, que I'on rencontre y arriuant d'icy, continuant de cheminer au Midy ou Sudest, il y a enuiron quatre iournées de chemin iusques à l’emboucheure de la Riuiere si celebre de cette Nation, dans l'Ontario ou lac de S. Louys. Au deçà de cette Riuiere, & non au delà, comme le marque quelque Charte, sont la plus part des bourgs de la Nation Neutre. Il y en a trois ou quatre au delà, rangez d'Orient à I'Occident, vers la Nation du Chat, ou Erieehronõs.

(From the first village of the Neutral Nation which one finds on arriving there from this place, and continuing to travel South or Southeast, it is about four days journey to the entrance of the very famous River of that Nation, into the [Lake] Ontario or lake of St. Louis. On this side of that River—and not beyond it, as a certain map indicates—are the greater part of the villages of the Neutral Nation. There are three or four beyond, ranging from East to West, towards the Nation of the Cat, or Eriehurons.)

Ontario is used as the name of the lake in English by 1698, when it appears in a translation of an account of the travels through the Great Lakes region of René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle:

Every thing being ready for our departure, we set sail from Rochel, July 14. 1678. to the number of 30 Men, amongst whom were Pilots, Carpenters, Smiths and other useful Artists, and arrived at Quebec upon the 15th of September following; we remained there some days, after which having taken our Leave of Count Frontenac Governor-General of Canada, we sailed up the River St. Laurence to Fort Frontenac, where we landed.

That Fort lyes within 120 Leagues from Quebec, about the 44th Degree of Latitude, on the Mouth of a Lake called likewise Frontenac or Ontario, which is near 300 Leagues about, and has a communication with four other Lakes, much of the same extent.

The lake’s name was transferred to a territory in 1792, when the first county of Ontario was created. The province was officially named in 1867.

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Sources:

An Account of Monsieur de la Salle’s Last Expedition and Discoveries in North America. London: J. Tonson, 1698, 2–3. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.

The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610–1791, Quebec and Hurons, 1641–42, vol. 21. Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed. Cleveland: Burrows Brothers, 1898, 188–91. HathiTrust Digital Archive. https://www.hathitrust.org/

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2020, s.v. Ontarian, n. and adj.

Rayburn, Alan. Oxford Dictionary of Canadian Place Names. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford UP Canada, 1999.

Image credit: Unknown cartographer, 1631. Library of Congress. Public domain image.

Brunswick / New Brunswick

British Revolutionary War map of New Brunswick, New Jersey, c.1777. A pen-and-ink and watercolor drawing, showing topographic relief by shading of an area crossed by the Raritan River. Roads, troop positions, and military emplacements are shown and numbered, with a key at the bottom identifying them.

British Revolutionary War map of New Brunswick, New Jersey, c.1777. A pen-and-ink and watercolor drawing, showing topographic relief by shading of an area crossed by the Raritan River. Roads, troop positions, and military emplacements are shown and numbered, with a key at the bottom identifying them.

29 June 2021

Brunswick is a city in Lower Saxony whose name comes from the Middle Low German Burnswik, from Brun (Bruno) + wik (settlement). The city was legendarily founded by Bruno, Duke of Saxony, in 861. The modern name is Braunschweig,

The North American New Brunswicks, a province in Canada and a city in New Jersey, United States, are named after the Hanoverian English kings George III and George I, respectively, who also held the title of Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg.

Of course, there were people living in the places that are called New Brunswick before Europeans settled there and renamed them. The inhabitants of the province of New Brunswick at the time of European contact were the Mi'kmaq, the Maliseet, and the Passamaquoddy. Since the province is a settler-colonist construct, I don’t know of an indigenous name that corresponds to the province as a whole, but the capital, Fredericton is located near the site of the Maliseet settlement of Ekwpahak (end of the tide) and the largest city in the province, Moncton, is located at a place known to the Mi’kmaq as Amalamgog (the delta where the multicolored rivers meet).

The indigenous inhabitants of the area containing the New Jersey city of New Brunswick were the Lenape or Delaware, who refer to their land as Lenapehoking (land of the Lenape). Lenapehoking encompassed all of what is called by settler-colonists New Jersey and the surrounding parts of New York (including all of New York City), Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware.

Of the two, the city in New Jersey has borne the name New Brunswick for longer, since at least 1735, when this advertisement appeared in the New-York Weekly Journal on 9 February:

To be Sold,

The Real Estate in the Provinces of New-York and New-Jersey, whereof Major General Hunter, deceased, died seized, consisting of the following Particulars, viz.

1. The House and Lott on the Dock near the Ferry Stars of New-York, in which Coll. Lurting, late Mayor of this City lived.

[...]

5. A 500 Acre Lott of Land on the South Side of the Raritan River, about 3 Miles above New-Brunswick, formerly Richard Jones’s, lying between Governour Barclay’s Lott and Clement’s Lott.

The Canadian province was separated from Nova Scotia in 1784, and a notice of the appointment of the province’s first governor is recorded on 28 July of that year:

28. The hon. William Wesley Pole, appointed by the lord lieutenant of Ireland to be governor of the Queen’s county.

—. Colonel Thomas Carleton, to be captain-general and governor in chief of the province of New Brunswick.

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Sources:

“Advertisement.” New-York Weekly Journal, 9 February 1735, 4.

Brookes, Alan and William W. Thorpe. “Fredericton.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 6 March 2019.

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.

Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2020, s.v. Brunswick, n.

Pearce, Margaret Wickens. Coming Home to Indigenous Place Names in Canada (map). Canadian-American Center, University of Maine, 2017.

“Principal Occurrences in the Year 1784.” The New Annual Register or General Repository of History, Politics, and Literature, for the Year 1784. London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson, 1785, 117. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Rayburn, Alan. Oxford Dictionary of Canadian Place Names. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford UP Canada, 1999.

Image credit: Alexander Sutherland and John Hills, c.1777. Library of Congress. Public domain image.

Virginia / West Virginia

1606 map of the Tidewater region of Virginia, showing the colony of Jamestown, among others. In the upper left is an image of the Powhatan, the chief of the Tsenacommacah. In the upper right is an indigenous hunter/warrior, carrying a bow, a club, and the body of an animal he has killed.

1606 map of the Tidewater region of Virginia, showing the colony of Jamestown, among others. In the upper left is an image of the Powhatan, the chief of the Tsenacommacah. In the upper right is an indigenous hunter/warrior, carrying a bow, a club, and the body of an animal he has killed.

25 June 2021

Tsenacommacah is the Powhatan term for the Tidewater region and surrounding lands in what is now commonly called Virginia. The word was also used to refer to a socio-political grouping of Algonquian peoples living there, the Powhatan Confederacy. The meaning of Tsenacommacah is somewhat uncertain, but it is often translated as “densely inhabited land,” a compound of tsen (close together) + ahkamikwi (land dwelt upon, dwelling house).

But when English settler-colonists founded their first colonies there, they dubbed the land Virginia, after Elizabeth I, the so-called virgin queen. Originally, Virginia referred to all English claims to North America, not just the area we now know by that name. But since the first successful English colony was in the Tidewater at Jamestown, the name eventually came to mean that and immediately surrounding areas and not other colonies elsewhere on the Eastern seaboard.

The earliest use of Virginia that I have found is from Walter Bigges’s account of Francis Drake’s 1585–86 expedition to raid the Spanish colonies in the Americas. Bigges was one of Drake’s ship captains. The passage refers to Drake’s June 1586 resupply of the Roanoke colony, which was in what is now North Carolina, but in the sixteenth century that was all Virginia. The reference to St. Helena is to St. Helena Island in what is now South Carolina and not to the island in the South Atlantic where Napoleon was exiled:

Here it was resolued in full assemblie of Captaines, to vndertake the enterprise of S. HELENA, and from thence to seeke out the inhabitation of our English countrey men in VIRGINIA, distant from thence some sixe degrees Northward.

When we came thwart of S. HELENA, the shols appearing daungerous, and we hauing no Pilot to vndertake the entrie, it was thought meetest to go hence alongst. For the Admirall had bene the same night in foure fadome and halfe three leagues from the shore: and yet we vnderstood, that by the helpe of a knowen Pilot, there may and doth go in ships of greater burthen and draught then anie we had in our Fleete.

We passed thus alongest the coast hard abord the shore, which is shallow for a league or two from the shore, and the same is lowe and broken land for the most part.

The ninth of Iune vpon sight of one speciall great fire (which are verie ordinarie all alongst this coast, euen from the Cape FLORIDA hither) the Generall sent his Skiffe to the shore, where they found some of our English countrey men (that had bene sent thither the yeare before by Sir Walter Raleigh) & brought one aboord, by whose direction we proceeded along to the place, which they make their Port. But some of our ships being of great draught vnable to enter, we ankered all without the harbour in a wild road at sea, about two miles from shore.

From whence the General wrote letters to Maister Rafe Lane, being Gouernour of those English in VIRGINIA, and then at his fort about six leagues from the rode in an Island, which they call ROANOAC, wherein specially he shewed how readie he was to supply his necessities and wants, which he vnderstood of, by those he had first talked withall.

The morrowe after Maister Lane him selfe and some of his companie comming vnto him, with the consent of his Captaines, he gaue them the choise of two offers, that is to say: Either he would leaue a ship, a Pinnace, and certaine boates with sufficient Maisters and mariners, together furnished with a moneths victuall to stay and make farther discouerie of the country and coastes, and so much victuall likewise that might be sufficient for the bringing of them all (being an hundred and three persons) into England if they thought good after such time, with anie other thing they would desire, & that he might be able to spare.

Or else if they thought they had made sufficient discouerie alreadie, and did desire to returne into England, he would giue them passage. But they as it seemed, being desirous to stay, accepted verie thankefully, and with great gladnesse that which was offred first.

Drake and his crew would be the last white men to see the ill-fated colonists of Roanoke.

Subsequently, Jamestown would become the first successful English colony in North America, and Virginia would be among the thirteen colonies that rebelled against Britain in 1775. On 25 June 1788, it became the tenth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. The western region of the state, which had relatively few slaves and little political or commercial interest in breaking with the Union during the Civil War, split from the eastern portion of the state, becoming the state of West Virginia on 20 June 1863.

I also chanced upon 1609 use of Virginia that, while far from the first use of that name, is fascinating in its own right. It’s from the dedicatory epistle to a published version of a sermon delivered by William Symonds on 25 April 1609 in Southwark, London to an audience of prospective planters in Virginia:

This land, was of old time, offered to our Kings. Our late Soueraigne Q. Elizabeth (whose storie hath no peere among Princes of her sexe) being a pure Virgin, found it, set foot in it, and called it Virginia. Our most sacred Soueraigne, in whom is the spirit of his great Ancestor, Constantin t[h]e pacifier of the world, and planter of the Gospell in places most remote, desireth to present this land a pure Virgine to Christ. Such as doe mannage the expedition, are carefull to carry thither no Traitors, nor Papists that depend on the Great Whore. Lord finish this good worke thou hast begun; and marry this land, a pure Virgine to thy kingly sonne Christ Iesus; so shall thy name bee magnified: and we shall haue a Virgin or Maiden Britaine, a comfortable addition to our Great Britaine.

Of course, Elizabeth herself never “set foot” in North America, but the passage is representing the dual nature of the monarch’s body—the physical human body and the body of the nation she rules. It is this latter body that set foot in and established colonies in North America. The passage also invokes the Roman Emperor Constantine, who was campaigning in Britain when he became Emperor. By so doing it compares the current king, James I, who by establishing the Virginia colonies brought Christianity to the region, to the emperor who established Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. And Symonds refers to America as “a Virgin or Maiden Britaine,” a place that, since it is untouched by sin, can be perfected as a Christian nation—a sentiment that was shared by the later Puritan colonists of New England, but not by the Virginia colonists, who were in it solely for the profit. The idea of “virgin” land also necessitates the erasure of the indigenous people already living there and is why today we call it Virginia and not Tsenacommacah.

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Sources:

Bigges, Walter. A Summarie and True Discourse of Sir Francis Drakes West Indian Voyage. London: Richard Field, 1589, 47–49. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.

Gleach, Frederic W. Powhatan’s World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures. Lincoln: U of Nebraska Press, 1997, 25, 207.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. Virginia, n.

Symonds, William. “Dedicatorie Epistle.” A Sermon Preached at White-Chappel, in the Presence of Many, Honourable and Worshipfull, the Aduenturers and Planters for Virginia, 25 April 1609. London: I. Windet, 1609, unpaginated front matter. Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Whitt, Laurelyn and Alan W. Clarke. “The Powhatan Tsenacommacah (1607–1677).” North American Genocides: Indigenous Nations, Settler Colonialism, and International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2019, 117.

Image credit: John Smith and William Hole, 1606 (published 1624). Library of Congress. Public domain image.