Nootka Island is an island near Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. It contains 534 km² (206 sq mi) of area. It is separated from Vancouver Island by Nootka Sound and its side-inlets.
Europeans named the island after a Nuu-chah-nulth language word meaning "go around, go around." They likely thought the natives were referring to the island itself. The Spanish and later English applied the word to the island and the sound, thinking they were naming both after the people.
In the 1980s, the First Nations peoples in the region created the collective autonym of Nuu-chah-nulth, a term that means "along the outside (of Vancouver Island)". An older term for this group of peoples was "Aht", which means "people" in their language and is a component in all the names of their subgroups, and of some locations (e.g. Yuquot, Mowachaht, Kyuquot, Opitsaht etc.).
Famous quotes containing the word island:
“I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)