The strange, mysterious and foreign origins of Canadian words
The words bear, nickel, and Canuck may not have once meant what you think
Mark Sundaram, a professor at Laurentian University in Sudbury, is fascinated by the origins of Canadian words.
Why we clean our eavestroughs but not our rain gutters. Why we celebrate the May two-four and not May twenty-fourth. Why we run to the bank machine to get money, and rarely to an ATM.
Sundaram, who also co-hosts The Endless Knot, an etymology podcast, says it's a built-in feature of the English language to be flexible, and even borrow freely from other languages.
"England had a history of being invaded many times," he said. "The Celts invaded by Romans, then by Anglo Saxons, Also Vikings, then Normans."
Zee? No, Zed.
And as just one of many English-speaking cultures, Canadians even attach a fair bit of national character to our linguistic differences.
"We're proud of how we spell colour, " Sundaram said. "And how we say 'zed' instead of 'zee.'"
And an animal with a distinctive national flavour — the bear — was likely held in high regard when it inherited its name, Sundaram said.
"Bear was originally a euphemism for any brown animal, as opposed to the proper [Greek or Latin] name for bear," he said. "The previous word for bear is arktos, which is related to "Arctic."
"They likely referred to it as 'the brown animal.'"
Pass the mickey
The word mickey is also shrouded in mystery, Sundaram said. It's a word in usage only in Canada. But how the word got here is still in question.
"There's a theory it comes from Mickey Mouse, because of its small size," Sundaram said. "But the first citation predates Mickey Mouse. Beyond that we don't know."
The Devil's Copper
Even Sundaram's adoptive hometown of Sudbury takes its nickname, 'The Nickel City,' from a strange source.
"The word nickel originally came from the German 'kuffernikel,'" Sundaram said. "It meant 'the devil's copper.'"
Nickel was a difficult mineral to mine and not valuable at the time.
It was literally, Sundaram said, a "Copper-demon."
The lesser-known theory of the word 'Canuck'
One word that could have questionable origins stands out for Sundaram: Canuck.
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"You'll usually hear it said it has to do with the first syllable of Canada," Sundaram said. "But research has shown it comes from a Hawaiian word: kanaka. It means 'man.'"
He points out that Canadian-Hawaiian words are few and far between in the national lexicon. How could this word stick around?
"There were quite a few workers and settlers along the Pacific Coast in the 18th to 19th centuries," he said. "Many of them worked for the fur trade. Fort Vancouver was sort of the western end of the Hudson's Bay Company fur trade route."
A couple theories on the word
There are a couple theories how the word made it into common usage, Sundaram said.
It either got spread along the fur trade route, carried back and passed through French — canaque — and eventually became Canuck."
"The other theory is that some of these sailors joined whaling ships and Canuck got carried to New England," he said. "The word was used as a racist term for foreigners by those New England whalers."
The earliest records of the word are applied to French Canadians as a derisive term, he said.
Over time, the word may have gained a softer edge, at least in Canada. In the U.S., Sundaram said, the word is not as sharply racist, but can be used disparagingly.
Ironically, perhaps, our neighbours have their own national nickname with possible racist origins.
The Oxford Dictionary says that although the word "Yankee" has uncertain beginnings, it was used in the past as a derogatory term for a person who lives in, or is from, New England.
The term is recorded from the mid 18th century, and may have come (as a nickname) from Dutch 'Janke,' diminutive of 'Jan' or 'John.'
Listen to Mark Sundaram talk about other Canadian word origins
With files from Markus Schwabe