What's In A Name?

     Newfoundland is full of colourful place names.  Many were named after places in Ireland, with a lesser number for places in France, England and Scotland, from where most of the early immigrants to the island came from.  Enjoy this list of towns, coves and bays and the origins for some of them that we have been able to learn.

• Little Heart's Ease

• Come By Chance: Originally called Passage Harbour by Newfoundland's first Governor, John Guy in 1612, the name "Comby Chance" was first recorded in 1706, perhaps in reference to the discovery of the harbour "by chance".

Bev by the sign of Town of Come By Chance

• Dildo: It's not what you think - get your mind out of the gutter! The place name "Dildo" is attested to this area since at least 1711, though how it came to be is unknown.  The origin of the word Dildo itself is obscure.  It was once used to reference a phallus-shaped pin stuck in the edging of a rowboat to act as a pivot for the oar.  It was also known as a "thole-pin" or "dole-pin".  The name, then written as Dildoe, was first applied to Dildoe Island located offshore from the present-day town of Dildo.  Captain James Cook and his assistant Mike Lane, who mapped Newfoundland in the 1760's, often displayed a sense of humour in the place names they chose and were not above selecting names they thought might offend sensitive readers.  Regardless of the origin, the place name has brought the Town of Dildo a meaure of notoriety.  During the 20th century, there were several campaigns to change the name, though all failed.

Bev and Al standing in front of the Dildo Post Office

• Cow Head: The community was first named Cap Pointe by Jacques Cartier. Later it was called "Tete de Vache" by French fishermen because of a large rock that looked like a cow's head when viewed from the sea. "Tete de Vache" means (the head of cow).

• Heart's Delight: There are two stories about the origin of the name.  One is that it was named by a traveller who arrived in the cove and found his "heart's delight" there.  The second says that "Heart's Delight" and the communities of Heart's Content and Heart's Desire were named after fishing vessels that fished out of the surrounding harbour during the fishery in the 17th and 18th centuries.

• Heart's Content: see above

• Ireland's Eye:  Now a ghost town.

• Heart's Desire: see above

• Happy Adventure: This whimsically-named outport on the Eastport Peninsula has three different stories behind its name. It may have been the sarcastic product of a hydrographer taking refuge in one of the area’s coves during a storm.  Or it may have been named by settlers happy to complete their adventure in journeying to a new land and finding a new home. Or it may be named after a ship captained by the notorious privateer Peter Easton, who later went into business for himself after the death of Elizabeth I and spent much of 1612 and 1613 plundering the Newfoundland coast. No matter which story is true, the name dates to at least 1817.

• Jerry's Nose: Despite the English name, this is another French Shore community whose name is most likely a corruption of the Acadian surname ‘Jesso’, after a fisherman who came from Cape Breton Island.

• Dead Man's Bay

• Goobies: Evidently, there was a local family whose ancestors came from Dorset by the name of Gooby or Goby. The surname Gooby is still around.

• Hare's Ears Point

• Cupids: Originally known as Cuper's Cove in 1610, other early variants of the name include Cupert's Cove and Kibby's Cove, but the name Cupid's Cove appears quite early.  No one knows the origin of the name, but it may be an Anglicized version of a Spanish or Basque name.

• Lawn: Lawn is spread around a small harbour in a relatively lush valley.  According to one local tradition, it was this lushness that inspired Captain James Cook to name the place Lawn Harbour.  But, it has also been speculated that a Frenchman named the community after a doe caribou (laun) that he spotted there.

• Leading Tickles

• Tilting

• Blow Me Down: The legend is that Captain James Cook named the nearby village of Blow Me Down, as he had named several places in Newfoundland. So was the park named after the town? No, it was named after Blow-Me-Down Mountain.  Blow-Me-Down Mountain was found on maps drawn by Joseph Gilbert, who surveyed the area before Cook. Climbers who have been to the top will tell you there's no mystery in the name, as the winds are pretty high up there. Now the name is attached a range of mountains.

• Witless Bay: came by its name honestly, if you believe the legend. It was originally named Whittle's Bay after an early settler named Captain Whittle, but when the captain died, his widow packed up the family and went back to Dorsetshire, England. With no one left named Whittle, the Bay became Whittle-less and then Wit-less. Those who called it this were probably well aware of the joke.

• Conception Bay