Pronunciation tip: Canada’s provinces, territories, and main cities
July 1 is Canada Day, and so in honour of that, I’ve done a video about the names of all the provinces and territories and their capitals and largest cities. If you’re not Canadian and intend to talk about Canada, you will probably find this useful. If you are Canadian and know how to say all these names, you may still find this useful because I say where all the names are from. I bet you don’t know! Hint: It’s mostly rivers, lakes, and Queen Victoria’s family.
The communis opinio is that Labrador was named for the Labrador Peninsula and that the latter was named for João Fernandes Lavrador, a Portuguese (1453 – c. 1501) who explored the eastern coast, including that peninsula, of what is now Canada (see the article in Wikipedia on him).
That Labrador or the Labrador Peninsula comes from French “la bras d’or” (which should be “le….” — bras is masculine) is a folk etymology.
I should have known better than to add that subtitle at the last moment when I was doing the last edits on it!