Naming Your Country

To my friends who live south of the border: I don’t want to insult you but I’m afraid I might. I really think that you need to come up with a name for your country. “United States of America” is not really a name. It’s more of a description. And you can’t really call yourselves “Americans” because technically, anyone in the western hemisphere could call themselves that. I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. I think it would just enhance your country if you had a real name. Any ideas???

So...what does "Canada" mean?


Word History: Linguistically, mountains can be made out of molehills, so to speak: words denoting a small thing can, over time, come to denote something much larger. This is the case with Canada, now the name of the second-largest country in the world but having a much humbler origin. Apparently its history starts with the word kanata, which in Huron (an Iroquoian language of eastern Canada) meant "village." Jacques Cartier, the early French explorer, picked up the word and used it to refer to the land around his settlement, now part of Quebec City. By the 18th century it referred to all of New France, which extended from the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes and down into what is now the American Midwest. In 1759, the British conquered New France and used the name Quebec for the colony north of the St. Lawrence River, and Canada for the rest of the territory. Eventually, as the territory increased in size and the present arrangement of the provinces developed, Canada applied to all the land north of the United States and east of Alaska. (from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Canada)