Talk:Name of Canada

Page move

As part of a broader campaign of renaming, User:Neelix recently moved this article to Toponymy of Canada. His explanation for this move is on his talk page here. I have reverted this move to allow a broader discussion here. - Eron^Talk 21:19, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I could be wrong but I believe an article on the Toponymy of Canada would be about placenames within Canada, while this article is specifically about the name of Canada itself. If I am correct, then I would obviously oppose the move. DoubleBlue (Talk) 21:48, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

There are currently 27 articles which deal with the history and development of the place name(s) which identify a particluar country. I feel that the titles of these articles should be standardized for better understandability and also so that templates such as Template:Europe topic might be introduced. Such templates would create a more integral connection between the articles and would also encourage the development of an article on this subject for all countries. It seems obvious now (based on the number of users who have made this point) that "Toponymy" is not the proper term for the standardization. "Etymology" may be more appropriate, as the term is appropriate to all 27 articles. My concern over the using "Name" is that several of the articles discuss more than one name. Would "Etymology of Canada" (and other analogous titles for the other 26 articles) be satisfactory? Neelix (talk) 00:23, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but this may be a case where there cannot be one hard and fast rule. I can't comment on the other articles, but in this article I see two major points covered: the origin of the word Canada, and the name of the country called Canada - specifically, the status of the term Dominion with respect to the name of the country. The first is clearly an etymological question. The second... well, I've waded hip deep through Dominion debates on both this page and the main Talk:Canada page, and it seems to be some combination of politics, sociology, psychology, and (in some cases) quasi-religious belief. I'm being a bit facetious, but my point is that this article is about less than the toponymy of Canada, but more than simply the etymology of the word.

I'd also like to add that I think a proper article on the Topynymy of Canada - linked to this article and others such as List of place names in Canada of Aboriginal origin and Canadian provincial name etymologies - would be a good addition to the encyclopedia. (I find it fascinating that the five coastal provinces all bear colonial names while four of the five (mostly) interior provinces have aboriginal names. And then there is Alberta... And the capitals! Four royals, three aboriginals, a noble, someone's home town, and a saint.) - Eron^Talk 00:37, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Eron makes a convincing point here. This article on the name of Canada actually encompasses two rather controversial elements: The origin and meaning of the name "Canada" and whether there was and/or is a full name with a title (i.e, Dominion). There have been (and will be) several battles over these points spanning several articles. This article is a good place to keep the sides of the debate more broadly discussed. Finally, I'm not sure "Etymology" is even the right word for these articles. What's precisely wrong with the good old English word "name"? DoubleBlue (Talk) 03:53, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

My original concern with using the term "name" is that some of the 27 articles would have to use the term "names" instead. Upon second consideration, this is not as detrimental as I had thought. The templates I mentioned will not be affected if I create "Name of x" redirects to the "Names of x" articles. As the term "name" seems most accepted in both this discussion and the one on my talk page, I will switch the 27 article titles to the "Name(s) of x" format if there are no categorical objections in the next 24 hours. Considering that this specific article already conforms to this standard, it will not be affected. Neelix (talk) 15:32, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Look, these "27 articles" are all different. Just look at Names of India, Names of the Irish state and Albania (name). There may be an actual reason they aren't named uniformly, has that ever occurred to you? dab (𒁳) 18:49, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps it didn't which is why this friendly, co-operative, constructive, AGF discussion is so helpful. DoubleBlue (Talk) 19:28, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

"Dominion du Canada" referenced several times

The French-Canadian consolidated version,

M. Olliver, "Actes de L'Amerique du Nord Britannique et Statuts Connexes 1867-1962", Publie par Roger Duhamel, M.S.R.C., Imprimeur de la Reine et Controleur de la Paperie, Ottawa, Canada, pp. 675, (1962).

references the long-form name of the Dominion du Canada many times.

ArmchairVexillologistDon (talk) 00:02, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

ArmchairVexillologistDon, Please discuss your proposed changes to this article here before placing them in the article. Thanks, DoubleBlue (Talk) 04:03, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Hello DoubleBlue. Thank you for your kind feed-back. I find the entire Dominion Status section a highly prejudiced piece of writing.

Firstly, the very first sentence,

"Neither Confederation nor the title of Dominion granted Canada any new autonomy."'

...how does this stand?

ArmchairVexillologistDon (talk)134.117.137.141 (talk) 21:41, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Clearly it's inadequate since we have no citation for the statement and I believe you are aware of the contentious debate behind its inclusion here. On the other hand, what new powers were granted with the title "dominion"? What if we made the statement less clear-cut and instead just introduce the facts and quotes that follow. Something like:

Confederation formalised and transferred the responsible government system that was already working in central and eastern British North America.

Thanks for contributing to a discussion to improving this article. DoubleBlue (Talk) 00:18, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Points-of-Duscussion

Quebec Resolutions 1864

http://www.geocities.com/yosemite/rapids/3330/constitution/1864qr.htm

Resolution 71. That Her Majesty the Queen be solicited to determine the rank and name of the Federated Provinces.

London Resolutions 1866

Resoultion 68. That Her Majesty the Queen be solicited to determine the rank and name of the Confederation.

For the duration of the Confederation Conferences of 1864 and 1866, the new independent country to be born was refered to as the

Union of British North America

Autonomous

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/autonomous

1. Government. a. self-governing; independent; subject to its own laws only. b. pertaining to an autonomy.

2. having autonomy; not subject to control from outside; independent: a subsidiary that functioned as an autonomous unit.

Dominion

Autonomous Communities within the British Empire-Commonwealth.

Conclusion drawn:

Therefore Firstly, the very first sentence,

"Neither Confederation nor the title of Dominion granted Canada any new autonomy."'

... does not stand. I shall delete it now.

ArmchairVexillologistDon (talk) 20:55, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

AVD, I do not see how any of those references make your point. You do not have a reference that says what new powers were granted with the title "dominion". Of course a new country was created from the several; not at issue. Was it newly independent though? How so? What changed? A dictionary may say that dominion means an autonomous community but is that what was meant in 1867 by the BNA Act and, again, if so what changed in Canada's powers? DoubleBlue (Talk) 18:23, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Hello DoubleBlue. Prior to July 1, 1867, there was the United Province of Canada, the Province of Nova Scotia, and the Province of New Brunswick. All three had feudal ranks of a Province within the British Empire. After July 1 1867, the Dominion of Canada a had feudal rank of a Dominion within the British Empire, and each of its provinces were ranked as a Province of the Dominion of Canada.

The creation of the Dominion elevated their feudal ranks to a sub-division of a Kingdom (i.e., the Dominion of Canada). This new kingdom had its own independent Parliament, and a Governor-General. This did not exist before, and thus consistuted the independence of the new country.

ArmchairVexillologistDon (talk) 134.117.137.189 (talk) 19:32, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

You know, AVD, from my personal perspective, I agree that the intention of entitling Canada with Dominion was intended to convey the level of independence and autonomy that the new country had but we do not have any sources that show that or that the level actually changed upon its conferral. Rather, I suspect, the level had already been gradually reached over time in the former colonies. The former provinces also did have governors (and Canada had a governor-general) and parliaments. DoubleBlue (Talk) 20:10, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Hello DoubleBlue.

I have read the two "sources",

(1). "End of Dominion Status", (1944)

(2). "Strange Death of Dominion Status", (1989)

and they do NOT say that Dominion Status was ever abolished. I own copies of both sources. I have read them again, and again. This wikipedia article which quotes them ... does so out-of-context.

ArmchairVexillologistDon (talk) 02:19, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the final paragraph of the Dominion status section is not written from a NPOV, does not follow directly from the given sources, and should be re-written. If you have a suggested re-write, I will not have time to consider it for several days but will endeavour to return sometime mid-next week. I can also have an attempt at one next week, if that's needed. Best wishes for your weekend, DoubleBlue (Talk) 04:45, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Hello DoubleBlue.

The issue of the long-form name of the country being the Dominion of Canada is only the "tip-of-the-iceberg" . The Provinces and Territories of Canada are also having their long-form names suppressed as well.

For example,

The Province of Quebec vs. the Dominion of Canada: In RE Indian Claims http://library2.usask.ca/native/cnlc/vol03/498.html

All long-form names regarding Canada are being systematically suppressed here at Wikipedia.

I do not understand why people here want to suppress the long-form names of Canadian Institutions ... why?

ArmchairVexillologistDon (talk) 21:55, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

How is "Dominion" an English loan-word?

It isn't. Neither was it loaned to English from French. "Dominion" is from the Latin verb "dominare", literally "to dominate" (in either or both good & bad senses).

As part of Canada's official name from 1867 to 1982, the immediate source was Psalm 72:8 - "And he shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth." This is also the source of Canada's formal motto, "A Mari Usque ad Mare". It's the "from sea to sea" part of the Psalm, which in Latin reads, "Et dominabitur a mari usque ad mare, et a flumine usque ad terminos terrae."

The term "Dominion of Canada" was chosen as an alternate to "Kingdom of Canada", because the British government believed the latter title would cause too much offence in Washington, DC - where Canadian confederation in 1867 was met with a resolution in the US Senate expressing, "Grave misgivings on the establishment of a monarchial state to the north." It was because of Confederation that the United States made haste to purchase Alaska from the Russian Empire, and then attempted to persuade the Crown Colony of British Columbia (1858 - 1871) to join the United States - so that Canada would be cut off from the Pacific. But the decision was made, in 1871, for BC to join Canada instead. So, that was that. Similar noises were made in 1949 over the "Responsible Government" option on the ballot in the former Dominion of Newfoundland.

71.198.146.98 (talk) 19:22, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

How is "Dominion" an English loan-word?

The statement,

...The French translation of the 1867 British North America Act translated "One Dominion under the Name of Canada" as "une seule et même Puissance sous le nom de Canada" using Puissance (power) as a translation for dominion. Later the English loan-word dominion was also used in French. ...

this is an unsupported statment. ArmchairVexillologistDonLives! (talk) 14:46, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

It's also completely wrong; dominion is a French word loaned to English, not vice versa. See etymonline. --87.112.126.74 (talk) 19:02, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

According to my Petit Robert, which despite its name is over 2,000 pages long, it is an English loan word. They give the etymology as,

1872, mot angl. « domination, puissance », appliqué au Canada en 1867

And the only use of the word in French is chacun des États, aujourd'hui indépendants, qui composent l'Union britannique.

The OED says the English word comes from obsolete French. So it would appear to be a back-loan, much like all the Japanese loans into Chinese of what had originally been Chinese words.

— kwami (talk) 02:58, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

The Latin word Dominus means Lord. The word Dominion originates from the Latin word Dominium. The word Dominate can be used as a verb (i.e., "to dominate"), or as a noun (i.e., "the dominate"). As a noun, "the Dominate" means "the Lordate" (i.e., "the State of the Lord"). Hence the Dominion of Canada means the Lordship of Canada.

Additional Note: In the French Language "Puissance du Canada", means "Potentate of Canada", which in turn means "Dominion of Canada". Your French Dictionary is confusing a verb "domination" with a noun "le Dominate" ... "the Dominate" i.e., "the Lordate" ... "the Dominion" ... a noun not a verb!

Additional Additional Note:

http://www.les-dictionnaires.com/robert.html

Paul Robert born in French Algeria, A.D. 1910. The author of this dictionary is unlikely to care about the finer details of "Royalist" English terminology in the British Commonwealth of Nations. He is most likely simply reciting some biased "Quebec-ism" of the day. A Dictionary is a huge thing you know. ArmchairVexillologistDonLives! (talk) 12:49, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Improving the text

Old version: While no legal document ever says that the name of the country is anything other than Canada, Dominion and Dominion of Canada remain official titles of the country.

New version:

No legal document says that the name of the country is anything other than Canada. Constitutional expert Eugene Forsey and Alan Rayburn, former Executive Secretary of the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical Names, state that Dominion and Dominion of Canada remain official titles of the country.

The old version appears to be trying to build an argument for "Dominion of Canada" - note the use of "While" to position the 'legal document' point as being less important than the 'official title' point. The new version breaks this into two separate sentences to give each equal weight. As WP:YESPOV says: "A neutral point of view neither sympathizes with nor disparages its subject (or what reliable sources say about the subject), although this must sometimes be balanced against clarity. Present opinions and conflicting findings in a disinterested tone. Do not editorialize." The new version also clarifies who is saying that 'Dominion' remains an official title, and provides their credentials (to make it clear that Gene and Al aren't just a couple of guys down at the local Tim Horton's). Ground Zero | t 01:02, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

An unregistered user has reverted my edits with the edit summary: "Undid revision by Ground Zero: rv - this makes it sound like they're the only 1s that contend this, when others (scholars) do too (qv Dominion); long-standing content requires more groundswell for change than this".

If there are other scholars that make the same argument, then please provide evidence from reliable sources (not quizzes for kids, for example). I have been bold in making this change for clarity and neutrality, which are both important goals of Wikipedia, and explained my change above. Reverting needs more justification than that the poor text is long-standing content. feel free to discuss here why you think the non-neutral, less clear text is better, and if you get a consensus for restoring the old version, I will of course accept that. Ground Zero | t 10:45, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

The Government of Canada (or at least many therein) seems to think that Dominion of Canada is still the most formal usage, judging from the Tartan reference, the GC Flag publication and the Prince of Wales visit site (albeit in the the form of answer's to quizzes for the latter two. Although to be fair, if they are in these quizzes, then I would assume that this is information that PCH has deemed that everyone should know as part of their heritage IOT be included as part of such an educational campaign). But your point is well taken. Whether two of the three GC refs should be disparaged or not because they are in the form of a quiz may be valid, but taken all together, I think this is adequate proof of a GC stance. According to the the Translation Bureau, the Prime Minister announced in the House of Commons in 1951 that Dominion should no longer be used as it doesn't have a French equivalent. As a result, it is clear it is no longer in common usage and the reasoning behind it, but there is more than just two academics who say it is still a valid form. For example, in Kabul there are official plaques put up for each participating country, with a full name in their respective language and the common name in English. Canada's reads "Dominion of Canada" and underneath "Canada". While obviously not referenceable here, it does point to a wider and continued belief on the part of government officials that this is the full legal title. In this case I think that reducing this point of view to only two people is doing a disservice, as to me it is clear that this belief extends much further than just two individuals, especially within the GC. trackratte (talk) 15:58, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

I believe the last sentence here encapsulates my sentiments regarding recent 'improvements to text'. Shall we also attribute the other various references where simply 'Canada' is indicated as the name, for example, to just the original authors of those works? Conversely, recent edits aim to highlight that Forsey and Rayburn are opining that 'dominion' is the country's title, whereas the various references clearly indicate that it is. After all, the Forsey document is a basic primer on government in Canada that is produced by the federal government (all other things considered). Per the edit comments this reference (also here) makes it rather plain about the status of the title. Lastly, this content has been stable for years, particularly after contentious editing that GZ seemed to be a party to, with similar (unsuccessful) argument). There is little reason to alter the text now based on what seems to be a well-reasoned whim. Thus, it is you that needs to build a consensus to keep bold edits (bold, revert, discuss). 70.54.134.84 (talk) 16:17, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

A few quick points:

• We're talking about the "title' of the country. Surely we can do better than quizzes and plaques in Afghanistan. (I work for government, and know that government documents are not always correct. There is no way that people writing a quiz for kids are held to any great quality standards - there have been numerous examples of errors in government publications in reccnt years.) I think you should consider why we can't come up quickly and easily with a ton of better references for something as important as this. I acknowledge that Forsey is an excellent reference, and have cited him as such in my edit. Rayburn is less so, but still not a bad reference. The Oxford Companion to history is another excellent
• I reject the claim that my edit suggested that these two were "opining". The word I used was "state", and I indicated their credentials.
• I am very amused that you raise an old dispute with User:ArmchairVexillologistDon as an example of contentious editing. AVD was an extremely contentious and quarrelsome editor who engaged in repeated personal attacks, and showed complete disrespect for other editors while trying to impose his creative and unusual theories on Wikipedia. He was asserting without basis "Dominion of Canada" to be the "long-form name" of the country.
• Finally, I wish to point out that this round of editing started because the unregistered editor was trying to argue the point about the title in the "Adoption of Dominion" section of the article, when it was already addressed under "Use of Canada and Dominion of Canada" using only a children's quiz in a government pamphlet about the Canadian flag as a reference. I find it rich to be accused of contentious editing. Ground Zero | t 01:52, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

In response:

• A number of reputable sources are provided to support 'dominion' as the country's title (and this is the article for that) -- while better referencing is always the goal, your assessments about the quality of the referees seems a little misplaced. Do you contend 'dominion' as the country's title is an error? Source it. As to why 'a ton' of references may not be available otherwise, perhaps that is a byproduct of haphazard constitutionalism or editing.
• While I am not challenging the wackiness of AVD, the old dispute was also about something broader - your and others apparent disbelief regarding the title, despite references. My link to that particular section is rather clear, and the anon then seemed to argue persuasively. I see the same arguments and position then and now, and stand by all claims made here. Aside from possibly splitting the 'While' sentence up, and more simply doing so, there is no real reason to alter said content. (I have no debate regarding the other text edit in 'Adoption...'.) 70.54.134.84 (talk) 02:48, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

“your assessments about the quality of the referees seems a little misplaced” – I don’t know what you mean by this. I don't think there is any merit to using quiz answers, even from government brochures. However, you’ve reminded me about the Oxford Companion reference. I had thought there were only two good references, so I thought that specifying them was an improvement. With that third good reference I will withdraw my suggestion of adding reference to Forsey and Rayburn. I’m okay with leaving it as it was, although I do think that splitting the sentence in two makes it both simpler, and removes the appearance of an argument implied by “while”.

“Do you contend 'dominion' as the country's title is an error?” No.

“As to why 'a ton' of references may not be available otherwise, perhaps that is a byproduct of haphazard constitutionalism or editing.” Or perhaps because the disuse of the title has made it quite irrelevant. It seems to me that the desire to make repeated reference to the title stems from lingering monarchism or traditionalism, neither of which I have a problem with, but I think we are dealing with a case of over-emphasis. Ground Zero | t 21:23, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

• Re: assessments, I challenge personal appraisals of reputable contributors or works where they are not necessarily called for (i.e., Forsey, Rayburn, Oxford) by those who may not be qualified to do so, though the quizzes are rather lame. All other things considered, with no substantial argument, it seems to me that the desire to deprecate (reference to) the title, broadly and here specifically despite clear referencing, is partly a simmering attempt by some to over-emphasise our ... post-modernism while casting off (perhaps ignorantly) the historical/monarchical underpinnings upon which Canada is based. So, who has the agenda? 70.54.134.84 (talk) 01:29, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

You are challenging my view that Forsey, Rayburn and Oxford are valid references? I mention that they are valid references only to contrast the other invalid references that have been used to support arguments here. Wikipedia has a policy on WP:reliable sources, so editors are entitled to have opinions on whether references meet that policy or not.

An encyclopedia should reflect facts. The fact is that, for the past forty years or so, the title is no longer used except in unusual circumstances. It can be as official as anyone wants while being mostly irrelevant. Ground Zero | t 02:16, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Of course I am not challenging the authority of these references. I challenge(d) the propriety of you (or others, frankly) marginalizingostensibly attributing reputable references that have been in place for sometime regarding facts surrounding the name and title, regardless of how irrelevant some may believe them to be, with the effect of promulgating one view over another -- e.g., oh Forsey is good, but Rayburn not so much... That may not have been the intent, but that is how it appears to me. Your assessment of their authority, given the passage of time and prior discussion, seems misplaced. There really is, was, no reason to dredge the topic up again, because of singular issues with grammar and you overlooking another reference. Anyhow, I consider this matter resolved for now. 70.54.134.84 (talk) 04:03, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

I'll readily admit that it is not precisely clear what constitutes an official title, besides the simple usage of the government of the day. That being said, the desires and style preferences of the press offices, and informal editor requirements of government officials and politicians, should not be mistaken as constituting statutory title. Nowhere in the written constitution does it state something to the effect of 'Canada's legal title is', or 'Canada shall henceforth be titled', etc. Right now, the common official usage of the Government of Canada is simply, "Canada", where the uncommon official usage is "Dominion of Canada". Before the mid-fifties, "Dominion of Canada" was the commonly used official term by all of Canada's governments. There has not since been any statutory declarations of a change of title, nor even of an instatement of official title, since none exists. However, both usages are still used, and are still used in an official sense, both domestically and internationally. To limit the use of either title down to the statements of just two individuals does not improve the article. In fact, it does the opposite. While I do not doubt the intentions of both sides, it is clear that both titles deserve to be mentioned as being broadly used and official (albeit the fact that one is rarely used today in comparison to the other is a required mention). To summarise, both usages are official and correct, but today one is used much more often than the other for reasons of both simplicity and practicality. trackratte (talk) 19:50, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

There are two separate issues here: (1) the name and (2) the title. The answer to question 1 is set out in the Constitution, the name is “Canada”. Question 2 is less clear: “Dominion” has been used widely in the past, and as no longer used widely. (Witness the fact that the only federal title still using "dominion" is that of the carillonneur, which is hardly a position of consequence. I doubt that the Dominion Carillonneur's name would ring a bell with anyone who doesn't work on Parliament Hill.) The constitution identifies the country as a dominion, so that can be said to be its title, but the fact that it is a term that is only used very rarely now makes the whole discussion pretty academic. I do not propose to eliminate reference to “dominion” –to do so would be incorrect. I think we have to avoid over-emphasis or repetition which, as I noted above, seems to be for the purpose of promoting an agenda. I also really really object to the use of lame-o references like quizzes and plaques to promote this agenda. Ground Zero | t 21:23, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I also really really object to the use of lame-o references like quizzes and plaques... Rightfully so. These are not reliable sources and should be stricken from any article that uses them as such. Mindmatrix 23:02, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Alan Rayburn (2001). Naming Canada: Stories About Canadian Place Names. University of Toronto Press. pp. 17–21. ISBN 978-0-8020-8293-0. -- Moxy (talk) 20:19, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

The name Canada came from Portuguese fishermen / explorers from the 15 century, more precisely from the Azores.

It has been common for Historians, for want of better research sources, to attribute the names given by early Europeans to places they discovered to early indigenous dialects. However, European names are much more common. (London, Paris, New Berlin (later named Kitchener by the politically correct) - all in Ontario. Melbourne in Australia, Nova Lisboa in Angola, New Amsterdam / New York ---- or from proper names; of Monarchs usually.

For instance the Island of Cuba has its name attributed to several extinct aboriginal sources. However, the home town of the captain who discovered it for Europe (Christopher Columbus) (= grew up in) was a European town called Cuba! Coincidence? Not likely - just ignorance on the part of historians.

So where does the name Canada come from? The official view is convoluted and has survived because it is de facto incontestable. In the Wikipedia text there is a vague reference to Spanish or Portuguese explorers. Spanish?

Consider two facts: firstly, Christopher Columbus married into the Perestrelo family, Madeirenses. Perestrelo is rumored to have shown Columbus a crude map drawn by Alonso Sanchez the last survivor of an expedition, purporting to have discovered land to the West of those islands. Highly probable: the Portuguese were searching the World by sea and also fishing in the waters west of the Azores long before Columbus set out and before Jacques Cartier was born . They were also in India already in the 15 th. century. So did the Europeans who lived closest to the Americas, explorers and fishermen, arrive in Canada before Champlain? - probably.

Nowadays we think of countries in their entirety, fully mapped and fully explored. But the Canada that the first Europeans found was a coastline with a passage or route into the fabulous wilderness whence riches could be obtained (furs). The first French colonizers were not "settlers" like the New Englanders but "voyageurs". Canada was essentially the Saint-Laurent, a route or path to a mysterious interior.

So here's another coincidence: in the Azorean form of Portuguese, not extinct like Arawak or Mohawk but used on place names today, a route or road in called CANADA! Usually "Canada to ...somewhere".

So its not "Cá ...nada!" Nothing here. That's used as a joke by Portuguese Canadians but Canada, a place or road. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Peterxpto (talk • contribs) 14:06, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Another coincidence. I don't think so. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Peterxpto (talk • contribs) 14:02, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

There were no english placenames in Canada proper before the 18th century, and the french did retain a lot of native names because the french government cared less about settling land (France covers the best land in western europe aside from maybe the Low Countries and Northern italy) than about trading and proselytizing. Thus, books translated in the local languages dating back to the first missions. We also still have enough on Cartier's travels to say that, no, the portuguese "theory" is nationalistic bullshit. On that note, the "first nations" in the first paragraph annoys me, it's a Laurentian iroquoian word and this imo perpetuates the nonsense of first nations peoples as this great monolithic mass. 199.180.97.156 (talk) 12:02, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Under the heading, "Adoption of Dominion"

Perhaps someone tapped a comma instead of the intended period, something I find myself acquainted with far too often, but I will bring it up and let another set of eyes concur and make correction if I'm right. Just before the inset text, is this:

He advocated, in the fourth Canadian draft of the British North America Act, the name "Kingdom of Canada," in the text is said:

I would recommend this in its place:

He advocated, in the fourth Canadian draft of the British North America Act, the name "Kingdom of Canada."  In the text is said:

As I quoted this out of the wiki text, the cite numbered 21 in the article becomes numbers 1 and 2 on this page.

Lytzf (talk) 09:54, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

References

Use of Canada and Dominion of Canada

This article could include something about the use of Canada versus Dominion of Canada when the Dominion of Newfoundland joined. WikiParker (talk) 12:18, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

User:WikiParker-I just added something in. Anegada (talk) 00:38, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

User:WikiParker-I just added something in. Anegada (talk) 00:41, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Why Kanata in the vocabulary list and Canada throughout the text ?

The phrase included in the article " In Bref récit, Cartier fully understands the actual meaning of the word ("They call a town Canada")"'' is not in line with the source and is debatable. What the source says is that "they recorded a word they used to refer to their home". The source does not say he "fully understood". The way it is written seems to intend to create the impression that it is not debatable that Cartier fully intended to baptize the land with the word kanata. Something that is debatable. Aaron Marshall Elliott, professor of comparative philology (a historical linguist), at John Hopkins University, contended that in Bref récit Cartier clearly set down Kanata as the word for village and that from the outset Cartier used a different word — Canada — as a name for the region. Further, Elliott found no evidence that Kanata had anything to do with the word Canada. He argued: Not a single example exists in Cartier’s account where he refers to the word Canada with any signification other than as a province. Among the Indian words given by him (a list of which follows at the end of his narrative), he has correctly put down Kanata ‘village,’ but without the slightest suggestion that the word could be taken as the origin of the name of the province Canada to which he refers so often. The fact, then, I hold as incontestable [is] that Cartier found the name Canada already in existence as applied to a single province when he arrived at Stadacona (Quebec) in the month of September 1535. For those who can read french it is obvious that Marshall Elliott has a point. At the end of the book there is a short list of vocabulary used by the natives. The short list includes the word kanata and its meaning. There is no need to say that Cartier understood the meaning of the word. What remains to be explained is why, from the outset, Cartier used a different word — Canada — as a name for the region and in the end he included the word Kanata as the word by the natives for village ? This is the missing link in the "kanata" theory.J Pratas (talk) 18:43, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

You don't know very much about linguistics if you think there's any real, serious claim to be made that kanata and canada are automatically two different and completely unrelated words just because they're not spelled identically. For starters, as has already been pointed out to you in the other discussion, the aboriginal languages did not have any written form at all at the time of Cartier's contact — they were completely oral languages, with no right or wrong spelling of a word because there was no written language to spell it in. Secondly, I was reading a source just two days ago, completely independently of this discussion, which clarified that the Iroquoian languages don't actually have a distinction between the /t/ and /d/ phonemes — they have one merged phoneme that's between a /t/ and a /d/, and so it's completely at the listener's discretion whether to transcribe that sound as a t or a d. Wanna guess what that fact does to a claim that hinges precisely on the spelling difference between t and d?

And even French and English themselves did not have unified "standard" spellings that were generally recognized as "correct" in that era — feel free to read up sometime on how variable English spelling could still be even in the later time of William Shakespeare. Pay special attention to the part about how even Shakespeare himself sometimes spelled the same word two or three different ways in the same work of literature — as well as the part about how he even spelled his own name five or six or ten slightly different ways in different documents. Do you seriously believe that an oral, non-written language actually has to maintain perfect consistency of spelling, in a historical time period when even written languages didn't have anything approaching perfect consistency of spelling yet?

Elliott wrote his analysis of the situation in 1888, a time when the science of linguistics did not know a lot of things it knows now about sound changes, about the processes by which distinct languages could be related or could have evolved from a common source, about the instability of spelling, and on and so forth — so a philologist who wrote in 1888 is not the final authority on a topic that many other linguists have also written about since 1888. The article can, and already does, acknowledge the substance of Elliott's argument — but we can't give it the WP:WEIGHT you're demanding, because the idea that you have to automatically privilege an identical spelling over an identical sound when evalauating a word's etymology, even if the historical documentation for the soundalike pair is extensive and the historical documentation for the lookalike pair is nonexistent, is an argument that would get you an F in any contemporary Introduction to Linguistics class.

The bottom line here, once again, is that 150-200 year old sources do not constitute proof that there's still a substantive dispute in 2015. Arguments, even published ones by purported experts, can be wrong, or subsequently disproven by new information, or riddled with logical fallacies, or sometimes even just plain stupid — so an inherently flawed argument published in 1888 does not have to be given fully equal weight to the consensus of modern scholars of the matter. Bearcat (talk) 23:42, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

The Marshall's answered question is: why has Jaques Cartier correctly put down Kanata ‘village,’ but without the slightest suggestion that the word could be taken as the origin of the name of the province Canada to which he refers so often?It is precisely because this question is still open that a reputed scholar like Dickason has moved forward in 1984 with a different theory and Mark M. Orkin (2010) published "The Name Canada: An Etymological Enigma". It is undisputed that the native origin is the most favored theory. However it is also a fact that we are still in the realm of theories and that there is an enigma that has not been solved. The article has improved a lot but has been written by an editor who rejects the "idea that there is any controversy here" (sic). If the sources, used in the article, say "enigma" and there are several theories the article should be in line with its own sources. (e.g. Dickason, Orkin, etc.)J Pratas (talk) 07:50, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm going to go over this one more time.

Elliott's argument that the word can't derive from a native source hinges specifically on the k→c and t→d spelling differences between kanata and canada — but the only thing that proves is that he doesn't know very much about North American aboriginal languages. They were oral, not written, languages at the time of Cartier's contact, so there was no established spelling for Cartier to work with — and, as I've already pointed out, the Iroquoian languages do not have a t-d distinction: they have one phoneme which sits halfway between a t and a d, and can be equally and arbitrarily represented by either letter. To this day, the Iroquoian languages still don't actually pronounce a t and a d differently from each other; they've evolved a contemporary spelling convention which did not exist in Cartier's time because the language had no written form yet, in which some words have a t in them and some have a d — but even today, both letters still represent the same sound.

A t-d swap does not prove that "Canada" falls afoul of French's usual pattern of maintaining phonemic purity when it borrows a word from an aboriginal language, as Elliott claims that it does, because t and d are the same phoneme in the aboriginal language in question. T→d in an Iroquoian loanword does not represent a sound shift. Elliott was a scholar of Romance languages, which doesn't automatically make him an unimpeachable authority on the Iroquoian language family — I'm not even a professional linguist, and I can poke a hole in his argument wide enough to drive a Mack truck through, just from having read three or four newspaper articles on Iroquoian linguistics!

And historically, his claim that Cartier didn't specifically say that he was naming the country Canada because of the aboriginal word canada/kanata, and therefore had to be applying a Spanish word instead of the exactly identical Iroquoian word that he was extensively writing about elsewhere in the same book, doesn't hold much water — because Cartier doesn't specifically say that he's using a Spanish word instead, or even that he has any awareness of any existing Spanish name for the area, either. So Elliott called the Iroquoian origin a conjecture not adequately supported by Cartier's own writing, and promptly replaced it with another conjecture even more unsupported by Cartier's own writing, with his sole proof being a piece of linguistic evidence that falls flat on its ass the moment you actually know three things about Iroquoian phonology. I'm sorry, but this is not an argument we have to take seriously.

As for Dickason, it turns out I was completely correct in my earlier prediction about it: she summarizes various theories that have existed, but does not advance any specific argument in favour of any of them being likelier than the others. The Innu war cry was a new one I hadn't seen in other sources, so I already added it to our article accordingly, but Dickason writes a grand total of one paragraph about it, documenting its existence but not advancing any argument that it's got a strong claim to being the truth (which is what you appear to think). I'm going to point out the first sentence of that paragraph for you here, and I'll even be nice and bold the one word that should be setting off a lightbulb in your head about it: Les Amérindiens de la rive nord du Saint-Laurent prétendent que «Canada» dérive d'un mot cri — kan-na-dun, Kunatun — signifiant «pays propre». (For the non-francophones here, I'll be fair and clarify that prétendre does not translate as "to pretend" in English — it translates as "to claim".) She acknowledges that the claim exists; she does not stake her credibility as a historian on any suggestion that the claim is true.

Again, what this still boils down to is that you're not offering a lot of strong sourcing support for what you want this article to do. Virtually every single source you've offered so far has been one of two things: (a) a summary of past theories which does not advance a specific argument for any of them, or (b) somewhere between 150-300 years old and often with easily-spotted flaws in their reasoning and/or without a shred of real corroborating evidence beyond the mere fact of the claim's existence. Even for the Portuguese "cá nada", you've offered sources which demonstrate that some Portuguese explorers described the coast of Labrador — also not Iroquois territory — in ways that are consistent with the meaning of "cá nada", but you have not offered any source which proves (or even really claims) that they actually bestowed the exact phrase "cá nada" on the St. Lawrence Valley (which is not Labrador) as a toponym, or that they ever actually interacted with the Iroquois in order to pass it on. Your evidence for that claim is still sitting somewhere along the line from "circumstantial" to "pure, historically unattested conjecture".

You are not offering sources which prove that any substantive dispute about the word's etymology still exists in 2015 — you're offering sources which prove that some debate existed in the past, which is not the same thing. We do not have to accord equal weight to every theory that has ever existed — we have to acknowledge them, certainly, but WP:NPOV does not require us to pretend that all past theories which have ever existed are all still under serious consideration by contemporary scholars as being serious claimants to the truth. Bearcat (talk) 14:49, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Bearcat Thank you for your time and for the throughout explanation of your views on the subject. Thank you also for going through all the sources I’ve provided and for improving the article with those sources and your knowledge on the subject. After reading your explanation on linguistics I am glad to accept your point. Although I have not seen Ellitott’s linguistic theory challenged like that anywhere in any source, and although according to the Wikipedia guidelines the article’s and “article talk pages should not be used by editors as platforms for their personal views on a subject” (sic), in this particular case even for someone who does not know much about linguistics (my case) your explanation seems to make all sense. Having said this, I would like to say that your work on the article is to be congratulated. I am appreciative of the time you dedicated to it and I am appreciative of your cooperative approach. I still have one issue I would like to cordially debate/dispute, but for the sake of clarity and hygiene of the talk page, I will be opening a new section. Thank you again for your time and support.J Pratas (talk) 07:04, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Further reading on an "Etymological Enigma"

There are a few works from scholars directly about the subject of the article. Below is a list of three recent works from the academia world, specific on the topic, plus a work, also from a reputed academic, with historical value and quite often referenced up till today.

• Orkin, Mark M. Orkin (2010). "The Name Canada: An Etymological Enigma" a chapter from "Canadian English: A Linguistic Reader", Strathy Language Unit, Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario [1]
• Rayburn, Alan (2001). “Naming Canada: Stories about Canadian Place Names” [2]
• Dickason Olive P. (1984). “Appendix 1: Origin of the Name "Canada", from the book "The Myth of the Savage and the Beginnings of French Colonialism in the Americas". French version available online [3]
• Elliott, A Marshal (1888). Origin of the Name 'Canada.' Modern Language Notes Vol. 3, No. 6 (Jun., 1888), pp. 164-173 [4] A book from 1888 with historical value. From a professor of comparative philology (a historical linguist) at John Hopkins University, probably one of the first works on the origins of the word Canada.

I propose this list should be included in the "Further Reading" Section. J Pratas (talk) 20:59, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

I think adding these gives undue weight to the idea that there is any controversy here. Dbrodbeck (talk) 21:20, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

I have expanded this article to include more acknowledgement of the theories espoused by the sources I've been able to read for myself — though we cannot and will not portray them as all being on equal footing when it comes to credibility, there's nothing wrong with acknowledging them — and have used these documents for sourcing. (The only one I can't use yet is Dickason, because that's just a link to a promotional profile and not to a readable copy of the book — the only thing I can directly read for myself at that link is a five-sentence "preview" snippet of one single page.) But it is not appropriate or useful to repeat the links in an external "further reading" section, when they're already being directly cited as inline references. Bearcat (talk) 23:28, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

If you can read French you will be able to read the full French version here [5] . Dickason work on the origin of the name Canada is referenced in the Third Edition of the "Aboriginal Geographical Names of Canada an annotated bibliography" published by the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical Names. The reference says "Une section (p. 297-298) est consacrée à l'origine du toponyme Canada, qui pourrait provenir du cri han-na-dun, Kunatun, «pays propre»." [6] (You should add this additional theory to the article. Dickaso is a reputed historian and the fact that she is quoted by the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical Names makes it relevant enough) .J Pratas (talk) 05:34, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Is the Etymology of the name Canada clearly established ?

Is the Etymology of the name Canada clearly established ? Are we today a 100% sure on a single theory to the point that we start an article with a blunt statement? :

• “The name of Canada has been in use since the earliest European settlement in Canada, with the name originating from a Saint-Lawrence Iroquoian word kanata (or canada) for "settlement", "village", or "land" ?

(this is actually how the article starts

Or should we acknowledge that we are in the realm of theories?

• Today there are historians, who acknowledge that there were other peoples, speaking other languages — some from the Algonquian linguistic base — with whom Cartier interacted. They point out that, problematically, the word Kanata also exists within Algonquian-derived languages. For instance, the Cree word Ka-Kanata, “signifies Cree narrative history and philosophy about ‘the clean land’. Here are some references: See: Olive Dickason “Appendix 1: Origin of the Name 'Canada,'” – [7] French version available online here [8], see also: Mary Anne Moser, Douglas MacLeod, Banff Centre for the Arts, Immersed in technology: art and virtual environments (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 179; see also Harold Cardinal, The rebirth of Canada’s Indians (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1977), 10-11; and Alfred Pletsch: Kanada. Kohlhammer Kunst- und Reiseführer (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer 1986), 11.

• In her published work on the topic, Olive Dickason also summarizes other theories but does not advance any specific argument in favour of any of them being likelier than the others.

• In 2010 Mark Orkin, author of “Speaking Canadian English, first published in 1971. Wrote a specific article on the topic, "The Name Canada: An Etymological Enigma" a chapter from "Canadian English: A Linguistic Reader", Strathy Language Unit, Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario [9] where he presents and discusses several theories. Orkin does not defend any theory and ends up saying that: “most commentators are divided between the first two (The Iberian origin) with the weight of opinion on the whole favouring the former (probably Iroquois, origin).

• In 2010 Dr Jonathan M. Bordo, MA, M.Phil, PhD (Yale), author of the “Canada the Proper Name of the Wilderness” speaking at the The John Carter Brown Librarydefended that the proper name Canada is the name that the French used in their strategy to force a wedge between the competing Iberian and English ambitions through the Gulf of St. Lawrence into an unknown and unfolding interior waterway named by Cartier La Grand Rivière de Canada…. Even if Canada is a mostly indigenous word, it was still brought by the Europeans.

Reading all these works, specific on the topic, it seems that all this scholars are very prudent in standing for one single theory or presenting the case as closed. Actually they use words and expressions like “enigma”, “probably Iroquois, origin”, etc.

If we take into consideration a different type of sources (e.g. Dictionaries and Encyclopedias), these sources are neither categorical on any theory.

• The Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles Online (2015) says that The etymology of Canada is by no means clearly established [10]

• The Canadian Encyclopedia (2013) says: “Cartier's may not have been the first use of the name Canada. Fishermen and whalers from Spain, Portugal, France and Britain had visited the new world before him. The Spanish experience in Mexico and Peru prompted exploration for gold and riches in other places and motivated King François I of France to send Cartier on his first voyage to Canada in 1534. The Spaniards, finding no riches around the Baie des Chaleurs, reported "aca nada" or "cà nada" meaning "nothing here" and named it "Capa da Nada," "Cape Nothing."[11]

When Jaques Cartier arrived to Canada Iberian fishermen (Basques, Portuguese, Castillians, etc ) had been there for decades. They called it “Tierra de los Bacallaos” (Cod Fish Land). They had made maps (most of them unfortunately kept secret) and they had established communication with the natives. Around 1525 they began whaling and fishing for cod off Newfoundland, along the north shore of the St Lawrence River from the Strait of Belle Isle to the Saguenay River, and in places where similar conditions attracted such northern marine life. Jacques Cartier encountered many Basque whalers on his first expedition to North America, mainly in the Strait of Belle-Isle.

It seems though that the etymology of the word "Canada" is still an enigma. Is it Iroquis-Houron? Algonquian-Cree? Basque? Algonquian–Basque pidgin? Spanish? Portuguese? Nobody can tell 100% sure. A similar situation exists with other words like “iroquois”.J Pratas (talk) 13:24, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Dickason does not state that Cartier interacted with any Algonquian peoples in her chapter on the subject; she acknowledges the existence of a similar word, or at least a claim of a similar word, in Cree, but makes no suggestion that Cartier directly interacted with the Cree — whose territory was nowhere even remotely close to the St. Lawrence Valley — before naming the valley. The Algonquian people whom Cartier directly interacted with were the Mi'kmaq, who had no direct interaction of their own with the Cree as the Iroquoian peoples were sitting between Mi'kmaq and Cree territory. So meeting Mi'kmaq does not expose him to a Cree word in any way, any more than learning a few words of basic Portuguese means you can suddenly understand Romanian just because they're both Romance languages.

The Portuguese theory has a very similar problem: even if Basque or Portuguese fishermen were interacting with natives along the coast of Newfoundland, Labrador or the upper St. Lawrence River north of Saguenay, that still isn't the St. Lawrence Valley, and wouldn't score you any contact with the Iroquois (whose territory was from Quebec City south, not north.) So to accept that theory as the real origin of the word, we would have to surmise, still without a titch of actual evidence, that this cool new Portuguese word somehow swept through the entire complex of Algonquian languages all the way over to the Rocky Mountains, and the entire complex of unrelated Iroquoian languages all the way down to the Hudson Valley of New York in just ten years flat, despite the very limited contact that the different Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples ever actually had with each other. Even in the 21st century it took the word selfie almost that long just to permeate English, let alone a dozen languages in two separate unrelated language families — and that's in an age when communications technology has collapsed the old barriers to cross-linguistic interaction and neologistic propagation that existed in the 1500s.

Maybe the theory held some sway in a time when the Europeans didn't understand that the First Nations were many distinct peoples with many distinct languages, and not just one common people who all knew and understood exactly the same words right across the board — but with what we know today of First Nations languages and where they were and weren't spoken, there's no credible or documented way for the word to have gotten from the Portuguese to the Iroquois. And there's still no historical documentation which proves that the Portuguese were actually using the exact phrase "cá nada" as a proper name for any part of the North American territory; there's the circumstantial evidence that the phrase can be used to express the same meaning as the opinion that some early Portuguese explorers are known to have had of the land they were seeing, but there's not a single known document in which the specific phrase "cá nada" is the exact way in which they express that opinion, or the exact name that they give to any portion of Canadian territory. You even explicitly demonstrate that the name they use for their territory in the region is "Tierra de los Bacallaos", not "cá nada".

As for the Bordo "Even if Canada is a mostly indigenous word, it was still brought by the Europeans" statement, that in no way contradicts anything that's already in the article or anything that I've already said in this discussion. Nobody has ever claimed that the Iroquois were already using "Canada" as the proper name of a country prior to Cartier — it was the generic class noun for a town or a village, not the preexisting proper name of the entire Iroquois territory. So that argument doesn't add any weight to the idea that the word had a European etymology, or subtract any weight from an aboriginal etymology — the political implications of a choice of toponym has nothing to do with the question of what the word's etymological origins are or aren't. If Cartier was choosing a name meant to wedge against Spanish or Portuguese colonial ambitions in the area, then hanging onto a preexisting name that Spanish or Portuguese claimants had already given to the area would actively undermine that purpose — it would inherently constitute a tacit admission that they had been there first, and thus had greater right to claim it as theirs than he had. He would have to choose a name different from anything Spanish or Portuguese explorers were already using, if asserting or reinforcing French sovereignty over the territory was the goal — so if anything, Bordo's argument almost completely blows the Iberian theory out of the water. Bearcat (talk) 01:39, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree with most of what you say, I understand the flaws you point out in the different theories and I also agree that some of the theories if proven would “kill” the others. But by engaging yourself in discussing the pros and cons of several theories you have missed my point. My point is that several recent publications on the topic have been very careful in not presenting the topic as a solved enigma. What the sources say that the “The etymology of Canada is by no means clearly established”, that “most commentators are divided”, “Even if Canada is a mostly indigenous word…” , “ ka-na-ta…come to be widely accepted”, “Cartier's may not have been the first use of the name Canada. Fishermen”, “An Etymological Enigma”, etc. So my point is that the “ka-na-ta” theory should be presented as the “most widely accepted” theory and not as the truth.J Pratas (talk) 09:00, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Cañada (pronounced "canyada"), means canyon, gorge, or ravine in Spanish...

Cañada (pronounced "canyada"), means canyon, gorge, or ravine in Spanish. There is a city in Los Angeles County called "La Cañada- Flintridge," named for Rancho La CañadaProbablynoteworthy (talk) 21:39, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Which has what exactly to do with the name of the country of Canada? Just because it's spelled the same way doesn't automatically mean it's the same word, as the English word pour and the French word pour demonstrate for just one example out of many. Bearcat (talk) 00:02, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

I did not know if it was related. I thought it was either an interesting coincidence or a possible source of the name & worthy of discussion. You are WAY out of line with your boorish comment. Weak people always confuse rudeness with strength...Probablynoteworthy (talk) 04:45, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

How on earth was my comment either boorish or rude? It was a simple question. Bearcat (talk) 14:43, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Are you seriously that unaware of yourself or are you being intentionally obstinate? Either way, I don't care, not interested in arguing with you or fixing you. I would appreciate it if you never reply to any of my comments if possible.Probablynoteworthy (talk) 05:59, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

"Weak people always confuse rudeness with strength" is not helpful in defusing an already tense situation. Also, if you don't want others to reply to your comments on article talk pages, don't make them. You can't tell other people not to reply to your comments except those on your own talk page. - BilCat (talk) 11:06, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Actually, I'm seriously very aware of myself. Bearcat (talk) 16:02, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Not related, as Canada was used on maps dating from the 1500s covering the region now known as Quebec City / Montreal, where there was of course absolutely no Spanish involvement. The linkage between the name "Canada" and aboriginal usage is also clearly established in accounts written by Jacques Cartier. trackratte (talk) 20:52, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

These statements are not accurate. Basque seasonal activity in the Gulf of St. Lawrence is known from 1517 to 1767. J Pratas (talk) 21:52, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Which is nowhere near Iroquoian territory, and scores you absolutely no Basque-Iroquoian contact in order to get the Spanish word for a valley or canyon down to Osheaga/Montreal (which is where you have to get it to in order to replace kanata) at all. And why would Basque fishermen be using the Spanish cañada instead of the Euskara bailara or arroila anyway? (Plus, why is the country's name Canada and not Canyada, if the Spanish cañada actually had anything to do with it?) Bearcat (talk) 05:49, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Commonwealth Realm

Canada, like other Commonwealth Realms, is a Commonwealth Realm, not a Realm of the Commonwealth. Grassynoel (talk) 07:56, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

"Dominion of canada" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Dominion of canada has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 September 20 § Dominion of canada until a consensus is reached. TartarTorte 14:36, 20 September 2023 (UTC)