Acadia/Arcadia

 Excerpt From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Etymology

"The origin of the designation Acadia is credited to the explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, who on his 16th century map applied the ancient Greek name "Arcadia" to the entire Atlantic coast north of Virginia (note the inclusion of the 'r' of the original Greek name). "Arcadia" derives from the Arcadia district in Greece which since Classical antiquity had the extended meanings of "refuge" or "idyllic place". The Dictionary of Canadian Biography says: "Arcadia, the name Verrazzano gave to Maryland or Virginia 'on account of the beauty of the trees,' made its first cartographical appearance in the 1548 Gastaldo map and is the only name on that map to survive in Canadian usage. . . . In the 17th centuryChamplain fixed its present orthography, with the 'r' omitted, and Ganong has shown its gradual progress northwards, in a succession of maps, to its resting place in the Atlantic Provinces.""

"Acadia (in the French language Acadie) was a colony of New France, in northeastern North America that included parts of easternQuebec, the Maritime provinces, and modern-day Maine to the Kennebec River.^[1] During much of the 17th and early 18th centuries, Norridgewock on the Kennebec River and Castine at the end of the Penobscot River were the southern-most settlements of Acadia.^[2] The actual specification by the French government for the territory refers to lands bordering the Atlantic coast, roughly between the 40th and 46th parallels. Later, the territory was divided into the British colonies which became Canadian provinces andAmerican states. The population of Acadia included descendants of emigrants from France (i.e., Acadians) along with those from the Wabanaki Confederacy. The two communities inter-married, which resulted in a significant portion of the population of Acadia being Métis".