How did Canada geese get their name?

Answer 1

There is an urban legend that a man named John Canada was the taxidermist who first identified and classified the Canada Goose from the North. He decided to name the bird after himself, hence the name Canada Goose.

To begin with, a "taxidermist" mounts the skins of animals. If the man was a biologist who classified new animal species, he would be a "taxonomist".

However, no record of a John Canada exists in either profession.

The first recorded use of the name, 'Canada goose' appeared in 1772 in Carl Linnaeus' 8th-century work, Systema Naturae.

James Audubon called it the Canada goose in 1836.

The name Canada comes from the St. Lawrence Iroquoian word kanata, meaning "village" or "settlement". In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona. By 1545, some European books and maps had begun referring to this region as Canada. In the 17th and early 18th centuries, "Canada" referred to the part of New France that lay along the St. Lawrence River and the northern shores of the Great Lakes. The area was later split into two British colonies, Upper Canada and Lower Canada. They were re-unified as the Province of Canada in 1841 and upon Confederation in 1867, Canada was adopted as the legal name for the new country.