From Wikipedia:
And now for the names of Canadian Provinces and Territories.
Provinces:
-
Alberta: Named after Princess Louise Caroline Alberta
(1848–1939), the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria and wife of the Governor
General of Canada Lord Lorne in the late 19th century.
-
British
Columbia: Takes its name partly from Britain and partly
from the Columbia whose crew first explored the area. It also references the
Columbia District, the British name for the territory drained by the Columbia
River, which was the namesake of the pre–Oregon Treaty Columbia Department of
the Hudson's Bay Company. The adjective "British" was added to the
name to distinguish it from Colombia and from what became the state of
Washington in the United States, whose name was originally going to be
Columbia, after the river. Columbia is a poetic name for the American continent
discovered by Christopher Columbus.
-
Manitoba:
Is most commonly believed to have come
from the Cree word manitowapow or the Ojibwa word manitobau, both meaning
"the strait of the spirit". It is unclear why this name was chosen
for the province, though it is generally thought to be named after straits in
Lake Manitoba.
-
New
Brunswick: Named in honour of
Brunswick-Lüneburg, the ancestral home of the British king George III.
-
Newfoundland
and Labrador: Newfoundland (Latin:
Terra Nova) Was named by its European discoverers around 1500; possibly by the
Portuguese explorer João Vaz Corte-Real in 1472, making it the oldest European
name in North America. Labrador = Probably named after João Fernandes Lavrador,
a Portuguese navigator who visited the area in 1498, of whom the honorific
"lavrador" means "landholder".
-
Nova
Scotia: Latin for "New
Scotland". In the 1620s a group of Scots was sent by Charles I to set up a
colony, and the Latin name is used in Sir William Alexander's 1621 land grant.
Although this settlement was abandoned because of a treaty between Britain and
France, the name remains.
-
Ontario:
Named after Lake Ontario, which got its name from a First Nations language,
most likely from onitariio, meaning "beautiful lake", or kanadario,
translated as "sparkling" or "beautiful", or possibly from
Wyandot (Huron) ontare ("lake").
-
Prince
Edward Island: Named in 1798 after
Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the son of George III and
lieutenant-general in British army in Canada. The next year, he would become
commander-in-chief of North America, before being transferred to Gilbraltar in
1802.
-
Quebec:
From the Míkmaq kepék, "strait, narrows"
-
Saskatchewan:
From the Saskatchewan River (Cree: kisiskāciwani-sīpiy, "swift flowing
river").
Territories:
- Northwest Territories:
Named for its location northwest of Lake Superior. The territory once comprised
virtually all Canadian land northwest of that lake; it has since been split up
into several other provinces and territories, but has retained its name.
- Nunavut: Means "our land" in Inuktitut, a
language of the Inuit.
- Yukon: Takes its
name from the Yukon River, whose name in turn means "great river" in
Gwichʼin.
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