NAMES + HISTORY

What Should We Call This Place Instead?

Since the current name has outlived its original purpose

Photo by Sarang Pande on Unsplash

I hail from the west coast of Canada, which is the westernmost province in Canada, bordering on the Pacific Ocean.

Its name is British Columbia, and in terms of size of the constituent states within its territory, it undoubtedly must be one of the largest in the world.

(If you are interested to know, its 18th position)

Its name is abbreviated to BC, and it houses 50% of the population living in Vancouver. Indeed, it could be beautiful but, without a doubt, it rains a lot there, it is very expensive to live there, and the professional hockey team, which had all the prospects of becoming a competitor team just a couple of years ago, is now completely inactive.

However, going away from the city and suburban life, south of the US border line and another 300 km further north, the area sees very little settlement or towns due to the mining industry; hence, the inhabitants here are not many. So, if you enjoy outdoor recreation, then BC is your perfect place.

The population of this region comprises five million people, but it hasn’t always been like this because now, it is considered multicultural since the bigger population, who is mainly urban, is considered liberal in their views, and the smaller population, who is mainly rural, is more conservative.

The Europeans, who initially colonized the area, included Spaniards, Russians and later Brits. But before any of them came and settled near the coast in the late 1700’s and inland during the early 1800’s, there were indigenous tribes, and their relations with any explorers, discoverers, colonizers and imperialists were always rocky.

From time to time, some talk about changing the name of the region. For instance, there was once a discussion about this issue in the 1980’s, when the population was much smaller than it is now and only beginning to awaken from its sleepy state.

It has been said that Canadian Columbia would be a more appropriate name for this place, but things that have happened within the past couple of decades have put an end to this discussion.

The first one is rather clear. It was the first time in history when the English people drew lines on the map dividing the territories not occupied yet. In negotiations with the American government, the English people managed to move the line along the 49th latitude towards the West Coast of North America in order to establish border lines between the two new independent states – the USA and British North America in 1818.

These borders would further stretch to the Pacific Ocean and would give birth to another territory, British Columbia (which took its name after the Columbia River), while American Columbia turned into an Oregon Territory.

At the same time, everything seemed logical enough for one person.

The first Europeans who were supposed to found the government west of the Rockies were the English. The territory of British Columbia consisted of two colonies, the Vancouver Island Colony and Mainland Colony. But the union of two colonies occurred at the beginning of the 1850s.

Moreover, Britain lost its interest in colonization of the Americas within only ten years since its attention was attracted by another project – the unification of Canadian colonies on the East Coast into one state, Canada.They all united together in 1867, but the distant province in the Western part of the country, BC, entered the Canadian Confederation out of fear of the immediate danger of its own annexation and connection of Alaska, the territory that the USA acquired from Russia for a mere song, to itself.

In spite of some representatives of BC having taken part in the discussion of the matter, the promise of a railroad connection across the entire country was enough to make BC become a part of Canada in 1871.

Since then, on all accounts, the colony lost its British character completely.

Although it still remains a part of the British Empire with peaceful development towards statehood as opposed to the aggressive approach of the US, the Canadian state is already more than 150 years old and BC cannot call itself British anymore.

But during the same period of time, many new colonies appeared under the name of British.

As soon as they announced their independence, they dropped "British" from their titles, or even changed the names completely.

There were such places as British India, British Guyana, British East Africa. They did perfectly well after that. Then why should we not do the same?The second element of the name does not appear so easily, but by no means is it any less controversial.

Columbia stands for “Land of Columbus,” paying homage to the Italian discoverer, who explored the territories under the Spanish flag in the 1490s, becoming the discoverer of the New World (without even knowing where he found himself), and launching a wave of atrocities committed against the natives, whose culture and civilization were exterminated in order to find treasures and make them accept Christian values.

Without the knowledge and experience of the indigenous people, none of this would have happened.

Therefore, it becomes clear that it is vital for them to have a voice in the discussion, but as a matter of fact, they do not agree unanimously, so who will represent them?

Many Columbias are to be taken into account.He did not know anything about this, let alone visit it.

Also, there is Colombia, a South American nation that has a variant spelling of the name of this person's surname.

Some of the names used to refer to towns and cities within the nation refer to Columbia or Christopher Columbus.

Furthermore, words such as colony, colonial, and colonization have been coined using the Spanish version of Colon.

Undeniably, there are those who would feel strongly against changing this situation since it reflects the history of the area. But what is the meaning of history in such instances?

Although the majority of the inhabitants use English language, the percentage of native Britons among them only stands at around 20%.

The main settlement is named after a sea captain of British origin, who settled in the area almost a hundred years ago. The name of the provincial capital refers to a king who ruled an empire with a racist ideology.

Changing such situations would not be easy at all.There isn’t any lack of anti-woke noise on that score as well. Still, there are quite a number of placenames across the whole country that originate from the aboriginal population.

Let’s take the three provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario, for instance. The name of the provincial capital – Ottawa – originates from one aboriginal tribe as well. Canada, incidentally, gets its name from the native word 'Kanata’, meaning a settlement or village. Not to mention the archipelago off the north coast of British Columbia, known as Haida Gwaii since its renaming from Queen Charlottes in 2009, which doesn’t cause much of a stir either.

If the nation of New Zealand can rename itself by adding “Aotearoa” to reflect the rich pre-European history of the region, then how come we can’t?

Honestly speaking, I do not have a clue what name to give our future province. Deciding on a suitable name is going to be an arduous, lengthy, and, quite likely, controversial procedure, which does not interest our politicians very much.

Yet, if nothing else has been able to persuade you thus far, let’s end our short discussion with our future province's flag.It is also fairly simple to conclude that even though the creator of this flag had certain intentions behind its creation, the flag itself doesn’t convey much symbolism.

Yet if this statement does not seem convincing enough, then let us conclude our discussion here with a small analysis of the flag of a nation that will most likely not be receiving any awards from designers and brand specialists in 2026.

There is no need for any further analysis of this symbol of colors to see that this design probably meant something else in the past, yet today it doesn’t convey its true meanings anymore.

Perhaps the only thing this flag ever conveyed was its intended message.

Photo by João Romano on Unsplash

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