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What’s in a name? That which we call Katherine Lake might first have been called Kaw-Baw-Zips-Kitay-Be-Gaw, the noise your canoe makes when it passes over lily pads... Story and photos by Bob Henderson Spring 2004 Issue Did you play “Geography”? You probably know the game, though you might have called it something else. The idea was to match the letters of the alphabet to geographical place names. In the version I played, players had to name a place beginning with the last letter of the preceding place name. Bloodvein (N) — Nahanni (I) — Iroquois Falls (S) — and so on. In other versions of the game, players ran through the alphabet — Athabasca (A) — Bloodvein (B) — Canada (C). Not long ago, an anthropologist I know made an insightful comment. Nowadays, he said, kids would more likely use movie titles or celebrity names. His point was clear: something is lost in this change. Think of that old game the next time you are sitting out a wet day in the tent or letting your minds roam during a long group paddle. Perhaps if we took time to explore the taken-for-granted names of our paddling destinations, we would connect to the land in a more meaningful and well-storied way. Are we becoming a landless people? A place name is often more than just a name. A place name can tell a story and, by doing so, encode important cultural memories. When we completely lose the story, we lose something from our Canadian identity. We begin to become, as American conservationist Aldo Leopold said, a people who “have forgotten that there is any such thing as land,” and move further toward the kind of “landlessness” that he so feared. All in a name First Nations peoples are — and should remain — central to Canadian waterway place names. Their Canada was, and is, a fully named place — a named network of ancient trails and waterways. It was a very interestingly named place too. Names of indigenous origin often relate directly to the land. The Nepisquit River, for example, is a major whitewater river in New Brunswick (relative to all other New Brunswick rivers.) Nepisquit (Winpegigewig in Mi’kmag) translates as troubled river or rough flowing water. The river’s identity is in the name — “all in a name,” as the expression goes. “ Everything about the Old Order — has been distorted or dismissed ...From Cartier’s time to ours … it’s twistory.” I could cite dozens of similar examples. Tadoussac at the mouth of the Saguenay River in Quebec, means breasts in the Innu language — certainly a recognizable landmark from a distance. But perhaps my favourite is Tooguya, a particular branch of the South Lady Evelyn River in the Temagami area of Ontario. Tooguya is Ojibway for bending over river, or more crudely translated, open ass river. Apparently this branch of the river was laden with shoreline overhangs and tree limbs that obstructed the passage so much that the bow paddler remained bent over to clear it: plumber’s butt, one might say. The very name Tooguya gave fair warning of what to expect! So did the name of Temagami’s Manitou Lake, at least in its original native name. Manitou Lake should really translate into the English as roaring spirit lake, for the loose boulders that fall in the spring on the lake’s east side. That is something for campers to remember for sure. And Opeongo in Algonquin Park, Ontario means sandy narrows, which correctly tells you this is a fine place to camp on the big lake. Back to New Brunswick There are practical lessons to be learned in exploring place name meanings, coast to coast, but I have a real love affair for New Brunswick (and Maine) place names. Some of the best are, in part, the result of mistranslations, misnomers or just mis-pronunciations. The Upsalquitch River, for example, is corrupted from Absetquetch meaning small river (when compared to the Restigouche River). In part, I love just saying the word, but I’ve also stood at Popple Depot and planned for a future trip in which I would travel the “troubled” Nepisquit to the “small river” Upsalquitch, to access the “river that divides like the hand,” the Restigouche. Presumably I’d be travelling into this final river via one of its fingers. Interestingly, there is another possible meaning for “Restigouche.” Father Richard in the Jesuit Relations, 1642, includes a story of an unsuccessful Mohawk raid into this region of the Mi’kmag. The Mi’kmag leader, Tonel, shouted at the young Mohawk leader at the moment of his execution, “Listo Gotj!” which means, “Disobedience to your father!” According to Mi’kmag elders, Tonel changed the name of the region to listo gotj in commemoration of this battle. For listo gotj we eventually get Restigouche in English. It was a special treat to hear a fuller version of the listo gotj Mohawk-Mi’kmag conflict as told to me by Mi’kmag story teller, Gilbert Sewell. It’s twistory If the stories around the Restigouche name are intriguing, translation becomes even more tangled and intriguing once explorers and settlers are involved. The excellent book, Ancient Land; Ancient Sky — Following Canada’s Native Canoe Routes” (1999), which is written from a native perspective, notes that “Everything about the Old Order — medical knowledge, religious beliefs, artistic achievements, industry, commercial relations — has been distorted or dismissed … From Cartier’s time to ours … it’s twistory.” I could easily teach a university course on this convoluted, place name “twistory” but for now, let’s stick to the paddler’s view. From the native names already mentioned, a pattern is clear. In English, places are often named for people in a general commemorative way. Much of Canada has been re-named in this manner. But naming places for people seems an arrogant gesture to native peoples, as I understand it. Instead, the original names in native dialects often refer to some specific quality of the land. I’ve outlined four categories: shape-based names, event-based names, names based on vegetation and names that refer to spirits. Some of my favourite examples of all four types come from the Algonquin Park and Temagami areas. Matagamasi Lake is certainly a shape-based name: lake divided in two waters coming together. I have a special liking for such names, which explain the geography itself. Traverse, Cross or Oxtongue Lakes were all generally Kameejeegami in Ojibway, a place where river outlets are across from each other. Annamanipissing Lake is, as the name says, where it leaves from the headwaters for Nipissing waters. Sitting Rabbit Lake is a nice variation on this theme: the lake looks, on the map, like a sitting rabbit. Names that tell a tale Jumping Caribou Lake, on the other hand, is clearly an event-based name — a place where the caribou went into the water or where men hunted for them. At Hanging Shit Lake, the intestines of an animal were left hanging from a tree. (I, for one, would take Hanging Shit Lake over the new name, Bob’s Creek / Pilgrim Creek, any day.) And I must mention a lake named after a sound the namer heard: Beaver Chewing Lake. Vegetation-based names include Katherine Lake, which was originally Kaw-Baw-Zips-Kitay-Be-Gaw, or translated, the noise made when your canoe passes over lily pads, or scraping lake. And Chis-kon-abikong, which means conjuring rock, commemorates spirits. Sadly there are also many native sounding words that have been corrupted overtime to be meaningless. The Chiniguichi River in Ontario’s Sturgeon River area is one such example. Although guichi means the outlet in Ojibway, “chini” doesn’t make sense. Other original stories have been lost, such as those for well-known lakes in Algonquin Park (Lake of Bays, Canoe Lake, Smoke Lake and Burnt Island Lake). An old timer had recorded place name meanings in his journal, but the journal was lost in a cabin fire — a reminder of our sometimes fragile link to the past. Some of those places, however, gained their new names thanks to interesting later events, as explorers “re-discovered” the land. Canoe Lake gained its new name during Alexander Murray’s geological expedition during 1853. The party “delayed several days to construct a new canoe” for the upriver headwaters travel. En route to China? Another of my favourites is the La Chine rapids, just west of Montreal. As you might guess, this did not commemorate a feature of the land. La Salle named this site in the mid-1600s thinking he was en route to China. Place names in Canada are often the result of a re-naming by European or other immigrant cultures, sometimes with little relation to the land. Misses and mistakes The mistakes, coupled with misses in translation and pronunciation, are the sources of some of the best stories. Canada, of course, is our great mistranslation. Cartier confused the Iroquoian word “kanata” meaning village, for the name of the country overall. Similarly, the name Baie St. Laurent (named after that Saint’s particular day) originally marked a nondescript bay Cartier had visited and noted on his maps and charts. Problem was, he was short on space so the notation was placed more on the open area of the page away from the coast. Back in France, the map maker misunderstood and named the whole gulf, St. Lawrence. Lake of the Woods in North Western Ontario was known to the Cree as Min-es-tic, or Lake of the Islands. It has, after all, some 14,000 islands. The French made a most glaring mistake when they mistook min-es-tic for the Cree word mis-tic, which means wood. And that’s not all. It is not a devil! Native writer, Louise Erdrich, is poignant when she writes about Devil’s Bay in Lake of the Woods, and the plethora of “Indian” names. “Squaw Rock. Devil’s This and Devil’s That. Indian or Tomahawk Anything. There’s no use railing … Some day, when there is nothing more important to do, the Anishinaabeg will demand that all the names be changed. For it was obviously the rock painting at the entrance to the bay that inspired the name. It is not a devil, of course, but a spirit in communication with the unknowable.” Death by cartography Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island is another classic misnomer. When the Nuu-Chah-Nulth people meet Cook’s men in 1778, they were shouting, Nootka it cheme. Although this actually means, go around to the harbour, the people became the Nootka Indians and the place Nootka Sound. Wayne Haimila, in Ancient Land; Ancient Sky, has referred to such errors as “death by cartography.” Ninstints, too, is an accident of history. The town which stood at the south end of Haida Gwaii (not the Queen Charlottes!) was called Sga'nguai, or Red-cod island. Ninstints is the white man's corruption of the town-chief's name, Nungstins, Nañ stîns, he who is two. I’m grateful for the preservation of the Haida character of the name. At the other end of our country, in Labrador, the Notokwanon, Kanairikot and Adlutuk rivers have all maintained their native place names, but I can’t tell you more about them. Some translation or stories about these names would make a fine letter to the editor! A language of action When ancient names are corrupted or mistranslated, the misrepresentations can often be explained by the acute difference between English and Native dialects. Ojibwemowin, in fact, is entered in the Guinness Book of World Records as one of the world’s most difficult languages to learn. Compared to Ojibway dialects, English is a noun-based language. As Louise Erdrich points out, “Ojibwemowin is a language of action … two-thirds of the words are verbs …” It all makes sense because as she point out, “ how many things, nouns, could anyone carry around …?” This is true of many native languages. For example, most of us would think the bear paw snowshoe is so called because it looks like a bear paw. But the correct understanding involves action: you walk like a bear when wearing that shoe. I have read that much the same idea applies in the language of the Hopi of the American Southwest (and perhaps many other indigenous languages in North America). In the Hopi tradition, as I understand it, a person spotting a deer might say, “Oh look there, the deer runs through me!” As the philosopher Wittgenstein says, “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” This ‘’verbness” influences place names, too. Action-packed! It is often fun to reflect on place names, even when the original names have fallen out of use. I tend to refer to Newfoundland most often, as “The Rock” — but I am always reminded of the original Mi‘kmag name, Wee-soc-kadao, or leftovers. The Mi’kmag, says Wayne Haimila, believed that the Creator had formed it after he had made the rest of North America by unceremoniously dumping the remaining jagged rocks, runt trees and bog land into the North Atlantic. Bob Henderson, the KANAWA heritage specialist, teaches Outdoor Education at McMaster University. Email him at bhender@mcmaster.ca Bob Henderson thanks both Gilbert Sewell and Rod O’Connell for their information concerning New Brunswick place names, and Craig Macdonald for his help with Ontario place names and understanding the Canadian Shield native dialects. Craig’s map of historical routes of Northeastern Ontario includes 661 Ojibway place names (not translated). For more information about his map, contact him at R.R. 1, Dwight, Ontario P0A 1H0. Suggested Reading Ancient Land; Ancient Sky: Following Canada’s Native Canoe Routes, by Peter McFarlane and Wayne Haimila. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country, by Louise Erdrich. Washington: National Geographic, 2003. Names of Algonquin: Stories Behind the Lakes and Place-names of Algonquin Provincial Park, by G. D. Garland. Algonquin Park Technical Bulletin, No. 10, 1997. Check the Paddler’s Bookstore for paddling books and maps about areas mentioned in this story.