This list of place names in Canada of Aboriginal origin contains Canadian places whose names originate from the words of the First Nations, Métis, or Inuit, collectively referred to as Aboriginal peoples in Canada. When possible the original word or phrase used by Aboriginals is included, along with its generally believed meaning. Names listed are only those used in English or French, as many places have alternate names in the local native languages, e.g. Alkali Lake, British Columbia is Esket in the Shuswap language, Lytton, British Columbia is Camchin in the Thompson language (often used in English however, as Kumsheen).
The name Canada comes from the word meaning "village" or "settlement" in the Saint-Lawrence Iroquoian language spoken by the inhabitants of Stadacona and the neighbouring region near present-day Quebec City in the 16th century. Another contemporary meaning was "land." Jacques Cartier was first to use the word "Canada" to refer not only to the village of Stadacona, but also to the neighbouring region and to the Saint-Lawrence River.
In other Iroquoian languages, the words for "town" or "village" are similar: the Mohawk use kaná:ta’, the Seneca iennekanandaa, and the Onondaga use ganataje.
Provinces and territories whose official names are aboriginal in origin are Yukon, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Nunavut.
Read more about List Of Place Names In Canada Of Aboriginal Origin: Provinces and Territories
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—Janet Frame (b. 1924)
“Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
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The people who own them seem rock-true and marvelously self-sufficient.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“John Eliot came to preach to the Podunks in 1657, translated the Bible into their language, but made little progress in aboriginal soul-saving. The Indians answered his pleas with: ‘No, you have taken away our lands, and now you wish to make us a race of slaves.’”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program. Connecticut: A Guide to Its Roads, Lore, and People (The WPA Guide to Connecticut)
“The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)