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The French Element in Newfoundland Place Names

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2016

E. R. Seary
E. R. Seary*
Affiliation:
Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's
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Extract

Newfoundland place names derive from several linguistic bases — Portuguese, French, English, Basque, Breton, Micmac Indian, Gaelic and perhaps Scandinavian — with English and French names far out-numbering the rest. My study of the French element is still far from complete but, if it were, the limits of this paper would, of course, not admit of my treating it exhaustively. What I propose to do, then, is simply to give a short sketch of the history of the recording of the names and of their variety in the land of their adoption.

If for our present purpose we omit any reference to names which may have been given previously by the indigenous Indians or by early Scandinavian explorers, about which there is some conjecture but little evidence, the first names imposed in Newfoundland were Portuguese, which occur in maps produced within a few years of the discovery of the island in 1497.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Fall 1958 , pp. 63 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association. 1958

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References

1 Biggar, , The Voyages of Jacques Cartier, Ottawa, 1924, p. 10.Google Scholar

2 Harrisse, , Découverte et évolution cartographique de Terre-Neuve, London and Paris, 1900, p. 171 Google Scholar. I have, however, found only one example of the name, in the form Kerpunz, NW of Quimperle.

3 Dégrat is variously defined :

  1. 1.

    1. des sècheries de morues', de la Roncière, ‘Le premier routier-pilote de Terre-Neuve (1579) in Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Charles. Vol. 64, Paris. 1904, pp. 116-121.

  2. 2.

    2. ‘Départ d'un bateau qui se rend à la pêche de la morue. Etre en dégrat, se dit d'un bateau qui a quittè le port pour aller à la peêche de la morue.’ Larousse du XXe Siècle. 1929.

  3. 3.

    3. 1. ‘En dégrat se dit du bateau quittant le havre où le navire est ancré et allant chercher alileurs meilleure pêche. 2. Synonyme de débarcadère. Littré. Dict. de la Langue française. 1956.

De Courcelle 1675 records Degrat du pillier and Degrat du cheual.

4 ‘There is rock oft the toast of Brittany having the same name, and right in the entrance of the harbour of Renews, there is a large rock of precisely the same description.’ Howley, Newfoundland Name-Lore. Art. XXVI.

5 Forillon also occurs in Cartier (1534) and in the forms Farrillon (1597), Farillon (1610) and Ferillon (1674). Le Bocage Boissaie (1678) has B. des forillons and Forillon. Howley, op. cit., Art. XXV defines forillon — ‘a rock or island standing close to the mainland with a very narrow channel between', but I have been unable to trace the word in Hatzfeld-Darmesteter, Littré, Larousse or Mansion.

6 Lahontan cl696 in The Oakes Collection, Ottawa, 1940, p. 54.

7 Harrisse, op. cit., p. 139.

8 ‘Journal du Voyage que j'ay fait avec M. D'Iberville… Du 26 juin 1696 jusqu'en May 1697’ [par l'abbé. Jean Beaudoin] in Les Normans au Canada, par L'Abbé A. Gosselin. Évreux, 1800, pp. 86.

9 History of Newfoundland, London and New York. 1895, p. 19 note.

10 Two warnings should perhaps be made here : firstly, that the occurrence of a place name in, say, Brittany and Newfoundland, does not necessarily mean that the Newfoundland name came from Brittany; and secondly against amateur toponymists whose findings tend to be coloured by local patriotism, as when a Channel Islander, for instance, states that a Newfoundland place name common to both metropolitan France and the Channel Islands, can have derived only from the Channel Islands.

11 Harrisse, op. cit., p. 325.

12 Dauzat, , Dictionnaire ėtymologique des noms de famille… Paris, 1951 Google Scholar.

13 Cp. T. S. Eliot's note to The Dry Salvages : ‘The Dry Salvages — presumably les trois sauvages — is a small group of rocks, with a beacon, off the N. E. coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Salvages is pronounced to rhyme with assuages.’ Four Quartets, London, 1944, p. 25.

14 Harrisse, op. cit., pp. xxxviii, lxi.

15 Anspach, , A History of the Island of Newfoundland, London, 1819, p. 326 Google Scholar.