“Canada”: The complicated history of a name

In reality, Cartier was likely not the first European to hear or even use the name. Fishermen and whalers from Spain, Portugal, France and Britain had been frequenting the waters of the St. Lawrence before his voyages. Cartier, moreover, seems to have understood that the term was used in a more specific sense. In the linguistic notes that conclude his travel narrative, he explicitly recorded that “they call a town Canada.” And yet he did use it to broadly refer to the land and its first peoples, and the seed of a national name and identity took root.

The two young Indigenous men who acted as Cartier’s guides in 1535, Taignoagny and Domagaya, had been captured by him during his earlier voyage.  While Cartier and his crew are often remembered for their courage as explorers, they were also unmistakably agents of colonization — kidnapping locals, showing little regard for cultural differences, and imposing names on places and peoples. Thus, the origin of the name “Canada” reminds us of the entanglement of curiosity and conquest, of discovery mixed with cruelty.

By the early 17th century, tragedy had reshaped the region. The original inhabitants whom Cartier had called “Canadians” and whom archaeologists refer to as St. Lawrence Iroquoians, had dispersed away owing to epidemics, climate change, and warfare. Variants of “kanata,” still meaning “village,” endure in the Mohawk and Wendat languages to this day. This should be a reminder of the fact that interconnected Indigenous societies and cultures persist despite colonial disruption.

Samuel de Champlain and his contemporaries, meanwhile, applied the word Canadien not to the St. Lawrence Iroquoian’s descendants, but to the culturally unrelated Mi’kmaq of Gaspé. Such misapplications were typical of European explorers, who often transferred Indigenous names indiscriminately to new landscapes or peoples.

Then, the meaning of Canadien shifted once more. By the mid-17th century, French settlers themselves had begun to adopt the name. At first, it functioned merely as a geographic adjective: Canadian land, Canadian climate, Canadian products. But gradually, it evolved into an identity marker. A Canadien was now a French colonist born in the colony, or a long-term resident, distinct from newcomers arriving from France. A new sense of belonging was taking shape, rooted in the realities of colonial life. This appropriation of the name coincided with its abandonment as a label for Indigenous groups.

As Confederation approached in 1867, the search for a national name was far from settled. Alternatives abounded, ranging from the fanciful (Borealia, Victorialand) to the historically rooted (Hochelaga). Ultimately, Canada prevailed, but not everyone welcomed it. In the Maritime provinces — Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island — many resisted the term, seeing it as something that belonged to central provinces like Ontario and Quebec rather than to themselves. The Canadians were “from away.”

That Canada — a vast country defined by cultural multiplicity — should take its name from a misunderstanding is profoundly fitting. From its very beginnings, “Canada” has never meant just one thing. It has described attachment to the land and, equally, negotiation and debate over whose land it is.

From a single town on the St. Lawrence, the name grew into a nation-state, and from a misunderstanding emerged a powerful symbol of belonging. But it remains a name in motion, continually shaped and reshaped by the people who claim it, reject it, or redefine it. To be Canadian is, and always has been, to live in the space between meanings — where history, culture and identity meet, clash and evolve.