# Is Canada basically called and pronounced "Canada" in every language? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 11, 2017, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-canada-basically-called-and-pronounced-canada-in-every-language/790973 "2017-07-11T01:47:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2017, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-canada-basically-called-and-pronounced-canada-in-every-language/790973/21 "2017-07-12T07:57:31Z")
> [@Trancephalic](#): > > Tetsuo! That’s Kan **e** da. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2017, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-canada-basically-called-and-pronounced-canada-in-every-language/790973/22 "2017-07-12T08:34:31Z")
In Indonesian, the US is “Amerika Serikat,” which is literally “federated America.” Canada is “Kanada.” Perhaps Canadians, unlike most countries, have found their One True Name? ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2017, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-canada-basically-called-and-pronounced-canada-in-every-language/790973/23 "2017-07-12T09:57:43Z")
My guess is this: Canada is a newer country and concept without any inherent meaning in its name. So it doesn’t have other names used historically by people outside the country, and there’s no way to translate it like you can a phrase like “The United States of America.” Nor does it have a long enough history to have had several historical names of its own that some country might choose to use. In other words, none of the reasons that countries have multiple names would seem to apply to Canada. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2017, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-canada-basically-called-and-pronounced-canada-in-every-language/790973/24 "2017-07-12T10:02:36Z")
Yeah, most countries established from 1800 onward have names which are pretty much the same in all (or almost all) languages, with the occasional differences due to transcription issues. And when you have something so different that it’s clearly not a transcription it’s likely to be a direct translation. I know Canada had that name pre-1800, but I don’t think it was considered a “country” back then. I think there’s actually not so many countries with very-different names as the OP thinks. ---
**Author:** ![Marci\_Al](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e47c2d/32.png) [@Marci\_Al](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marci_Al)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2017, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-canada-basically-called-and-pronounced-canada-in-every-language/790973/25 "2017-07-12T22:55:26Z")
Maybe in Japan or some other Asian country, people will pronounce it “Kang-da.” ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-canada-basically-called-and-pronounced-canada-in-every-language/790973/26 "2017-07-13T00:07:53Z")
> [@Marci\_Al](#): > > Maybe in Japan or some other Asian country, people will pronounce it “Kang-da.” No, Japanese is a hyper-phonetic language. ---
**Author:** ![Marci\_Al](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e47c2d/32.png) [@Marci\_Al](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marci_Al)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-canada-basically-called-and-pronounced-canada-in-every-language/790973/27 "2017-07-13T03:43:22Z")
Then how come they delete middle syllables and add an ‘ng’ between? Asakusa and Kyokusuka become ‘Asak-sa’ and ‘Kyokuska’ while Doku and Kaga become ‘Dongku’ and ‘Kang-ga.’ ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Nord\_du\_Nord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Le\_Nord\_du\_Nord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Nord_du_Nord)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-canada-basically-called-and-pronounced-canada-in-every-language/790973/28 "2017-07-13T17:03:42Z")
> [@zimaane](#): > > In French, the name of the country is Le Canada, with the stress on the last syllable. In French, the name by itself is Canada. It’s only when used in a sentence that the article is needed. Most countries need an article that way (la France, le Mexique…) but some do not, for some reason (Cuba, Haiti, Monaco…). ---
**Author:** ![Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-canada-basically-called-and-pronounced-canada-in-every-language/790973/29 "2017-07-13T22:44:52Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > My guess is this: Canada is a newer country and concept without any inherent meaning in its name. Except Canada comes from the Iroquois word canada or kanata, which means village. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-canada-basically-called-and-pronounced-canada-in-every-language/790973/30 "2017-07-13T22:56:52Z")
> [@Barbarian](#): > > Except Canada comes from the Iroquois word canada or kanata, which means village. Exactly. I work in the City of Kanata, which is now part of the amalgamated City of Ottawa, but as most amalgamations go, the locals can’t break the naming tradition. Sent from my XT1635-02 using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![Sparky812](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eb9ed0/32.png) [@Sparky812](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sparky812)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2017, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-canada-basically-called-and-pronounced-canada-in-every-language/790973/31 "2017-07-21T13:17:35Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > My guess is this: Canada is a newer country and concept without any inherent meaning in its name. So it doesn’t have other names used historically by people outside the country, and there’s no way to translate it like you can a phrase like “The United States of America.” Nor does it have a long enough history to have had several historical names of its own that some country might choose to use. > > In other words, none of the reasons that countries have multiple names would seem to apply to Canada. Wow… how can anyone even respond to this? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2017, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-canada-basically-called-and-pronounced-canada-in-every-language/790973/32 "2017-07-21T13:55:37Z")
> [@Sparky812](#): > > Wow… how can anyone even respond to this? 😕 Which is why I didn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2017, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-canada-basically-called-and-pronounced-canada-in-every-language/790973/33 "2017-07-21T13:59:06Z")
> [@Sparky812](#): > > Wow… how can anyone even respond to this? 😕 Well, we can start by noting the relative ages of the term “America” and “Canada”: According to the wiki article, [Naming of the Americas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_of_the_Americas#Earliest_use_of_name) > [@](#): > > The earliest known use of the name America dates to **April 25, 1507** , where it was applied to what is now known as South America. And according to this Government of Canada website: > [@](#): > > The name “Canada” likely comes from the Huron-Iroquois word “kanata,” meaning “village” or “settlement.” In 1535, two Aboriginal youths told French explorer Jacques Cartier about the route to kanata; they were actually referring to the village of Stadacona, the site of the present-day City of Québec. For lack of another name, Cartier used the word “Canada” to describe not only the village, but the entire area controlled by its chief, Donnacona. > > The name was soon applied to a much larger area; **maps in 1547 designated everything north of the St. Lawrence River as Canada**. Cartier also called the St. Lawrence River the “rivière du Canada,” a name used until the early 1600s. By 1616, although the entire region was known as New France, the area along the great river of Canada and the Gulf of St. Lawrence was still called Canada. So, the two names, America and Canada have roughly the same age. America predates Canada by about 30 years, but from a distance of close to 5 centuries, I’d say that’s a tie. Also, unlike “America”, “Canada” does have a relatively clear etymology: it’s derived from aboriginal languages. In other words, it’s a place name that had a clear meaning originally, but then gradually expanded to mean the region, rather than a village. That’s different from “America”, which was a made-up name, based on a European explorers and map-maker. Then, there’s the fact, mentioned in the Gov’t of Canada passage, that Canada had a flexible meaning. It was the original term for the French territory along the St Lawrence, but there were other terms, such as New France and Quebec. So it’s not the case that the region doesn’t have a long enough history to have had other names, unlike **BigT** ’s suggestion, especially since “Quebec” was used from the time of the British conquest in 1759 to the passage of the Constitutional Act in 1791, which restored the use of Canada, by dividing Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada. The term “Canada” has been used consistently, with some variations, for the past two centuries, contemporaneously with “America” for the US. In summary, “Canada” and “America” have both been in use for about five centuries, so neither one can be said to be significantly newer than the other. Canada has also been used as a term for five centuries to describe the political entity that evolved into the current country of Canada. So really, none of **BigT** ’s historical analysis in his post makes sense. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2017, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-canada-basically-called-and-pronounced-canada-in-every-language/790973/34 "2017-07-21T14:48:09Z")
It’s not that Canada is a newer name particularly, it’s the whole title of the country doesn’t contain words with a general meaning that there’s any real reason to translate. Country names like USA or UK do. Most country names are like Canada that way, just a unique proper name\*. Of course that unique proper name means or meant something at one time rather than being purely made up, but there’s not the same reason to translate it as ‘united’, etc. Secondarily, for countries that are actually old (ie much more than New World countries) the unique proper name used by other old countries in the same general region is sometimes different, as in some European languages using variations on ‘Germany’ (Germania, Alemania, Allemagne etc) and others variations on Deutschland (Tyskland, etc). But again that’s not typically the case for countries a few centuries or less old, nor in languages of far off countries. Again ‘Canada’ is typical in that respect not an exception. Another special case is abbreviation in Sinic languages. Titles like 美國 and 英國 in Chinese for US and UK (also used in Korean and more often used to be in Japanese, sometimes slightly different ones in Japanese) are often interpreted as having meaning according to the characters, beautiful country and plant country, but are actually abbreviations of longer phonetic equivalents of the proper name, 亞美利哥. in case of ‘America’ for which the second character was adopted for the abbreviation. The meanings of the characters are secondary, though a non-negative meaning is aimed for. In case of Canada, and again most other countries, the name (加拿大 in Canada’s case) wasn’t used as often as names of major powers so there was less reason to abbreviate it. \*even if in some cases there are non-unique words in the title also, like the official name of Mexico is United Mexican States (in English) but it’s seldom written that way except for example in the financial press when referring to the issuer of Mexican govt bonds. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2017, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-canada-basically-called-and-pronounced-canada-in-every-language/790973/35 "2017-07-23T18:17:27Z")
There’s a very good article on wikipedia about the [Name of Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Canada), for those who are interested. One of the puzzling parts is that the Iroquoian peoples that inhabited the Laurentian valley, whom Cartier met and who used “kanata”, had disappeared by the time Champlain returned to the area some 70 years later. It’s presumed that in the intervening 70 years they lost out in warfare to the Mohawks, but it could also have been European diseases. ---
**Author:** ![Sparky812](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eb9ed0/32.png) [@Sparky812](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sparky812)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2017, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-canada-basically-called-and-pronounced-canada-in-every-language/790973/36 "2017-07-25T12:20:15Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > There’s a very good article on wikipedia about the [Name of Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Canada), for those who are interested. > > One of the puzzling parts is that the Iroquoian peoples that inhabited the Laurentian valley, whom Cartier met and who used “kanata”, had disappeared by the time Champlain returned to the area some 70 years later. It’s presumed that in the intervening 70 years they lost out in warfare to the Mohawks, but it could also have been European diseases. The list of other proposed names is interesting as well. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2017, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-canada-basically-called-and-pronounced-canada-in-every-language/790973/37 "2017-07-29T06:24:49Z")
Thomas D’Arcy McGee, Father of Confederation: “Now I would ask any honourable member of the House how he would feel if he woke up some fine morning and found himself, instead of a Canadian, a Tuponian or a Hochelegander?” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-canada-basically-called-and-pronounced-canada-in-every-language/790973.md?page=1)