From buddy Thu Jan 13 11:33:46 1994
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1993 14:34:31
Subject: How things are named


Did you hear how our country Canada was named?

... well ... there are two stories as to how this came about.

The first story holds that the first to arrive, upon meeting the
natives would ask "what is the name of this place?" to which the
natives would respond "canada? ... canada?", which means "what's
that you say?"

In the other story the settlers decide to put all the letters of
the alphabet into a hat and draw them out one by one until a new
name had been found ...  This is how it is said to have went:

"C" eh? .... "N" eh? ... "D" eh? ...


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In a similar vein, when Captain Cook was visiting Australia, he asked
his guide what those animals that hopped around were called. 

The guide answered, "Kangaroo", which is Maori for "I don't
understand you".