WWI-era depiction of a personified Columbia reaching out to the American people. A woman in stars-and-stripes clothing, including a star-spangled liberty cap, facing the viewer with arms outstretched.
20 July 2021
Columbia is a poetic name for the Americas, and more specifically the United States. The name, of course, is homage to the genocidal killer Christopher Columbus, who stumbled upon the Americas by mistake, and who never, despite overwhelming evidence that he had not, in fact, reached Asia, admitted his error. There are numerous places named after the man, but the most prominent in English-speaking North America are the District of Columbia, the Columbia River, and British Columbia.
There is no single Indigenous name for the Americas. Perhaps the closest is Turtle Island, a name given by some North American Indigenous cultures to their homeland. The name comes from a legend that the earth was formed on the back of a turtle swimming in the sea of the universe.
Of course, the early European settler-colonists did not hold the Indigenous cultures they encountered in any regard. The adjectival form Columbian appears in the early seventeenth century. From Samuel Purchas’s 1625 travelogue Purchas His Pilgrimes:
And vnto Portugall was Spaine beholden for Columbus, and Columbus also for his skill, whereby the Columbian (so fitlier named, then American) World was discouered.
The feminized noun form (it is common to render Latin toponyms as feminine) Columbia is in place by the mid eighteenth century. William Douglass’s description of British possessions in North America uses the term. The last digit of the date in the digitized copy I have access to is illegible, but is probably a nine, making the date 1749. From the dates and events in the text, the book had to have been written in the closing years of that decade:
The whole Continent was called by his Name AMERICA. Here is a notable Instance of the Caprice of Mankind in giving this newly discovered Continent the Name America instead of Columbia: Americus made no Settlement, Columbus was not only the first, but also the more general Discoverer of this Land.
The United States’ constitution, written in 1789, calls for a federal district to house the country’s government, and ten square miles were carved out of Maryland and Virginia to form what would be called the District of Columbia. The newly created city was also known as Washington, probably to distinguish the new construction from the towns of Georgetown and Alexandria already existing in the district. (Virginia later reclaimed its portion, which included Alexandria.) The name District of Columbia is in place by 1791. From the Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser of 26 September 1791:
The City of WASHINGTON, in the district of Columbia, intended for the permanent seat of the Government of the United States, being now begun, a concise description of the situation, and present state of that metropolis, may not be altogether uninteresting to those at a distance.
On the other side of the continent is the Columbia River, the largest North American river to flow into the Pacific. Again, the settler-colonists ignored the Indigenous names for the river, one of which is is Nch'i-Wana (Great River) in Sahaptin, a language of the region. The Spanish dubbed the river Río de San Roque (Saint Roch River). But in 1792, American Captain Robert Gray and his ship Columbia Rediviva (Columbus Renewed) sailed into the river. Gray named the river after his ship, ignoring both the Spanish and Indigenous predecessors.
Later, the Hudson’s Bay Company established two administrative districts west of the Rockies. The northern one they designated as New Caledonia, and the southern one, which covered the Columbia River basin, was called Columbia. (Most of the HBC southern district was in what is now the United States.)
The British government took control of the territory from the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1858, and the question of what to call the new colony arose. The first choice was New Caledonia, but that name proved unsuitable because it was also the name of the French territory in the South Pacific. In a letter to Edward Bulwer-Lytton, then the British secretary of state for the colonies, Queen Victoria selected the name British Columbia. Victoria writes in the third person:
The Queen has received Sir E. Bulwer Lytton's letter. If the name of "New Caledonia" is objected to as being already borne by another colony or island claimed by the French, it may be better to give the new colony west of the Rocky Mountains another name. New Hanover, New Cornwall, and New Georgia appear from the maps to be the names of subdivisions of that country, but do not appear on all maps. The only name which is given to the whole territory in every map the Queen has consulted is "Columbia", but as there exists also a Columbia in South America, and the citizens of the United States call their country also Columbia, at least in poetry, "British Columbia" might be, in the Queen's opinion, the best name.
Three days later, the British Parliament officially named the colony British Columbia. As reported by the Manchester Guardian of 27 July 1858:
The Earl of CARNARVON, in moving the second reading of this bill, explained at some length the nature of its provisions, and stated that the Government intended to alter the name of the colony from New Caledonia to British Columbia.
Sources:
“BC Geographical Names.” Province of British Columbia, accessed 8 July 2021.
Douglass, William. A Summary, Historical and Political, of the First Planting, Progressive Improvements, and Present State of the British Settlements in North-America. Boston: Rogers and Fowle, c.1749, 65. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020, s.v. Columbia, District of Columbia, British Columbia. Oxfordreference.com.
“For the Maryland Journal” (26 September 1791). Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser, 30 September 1791, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. Columbian, adj. and n.
“Parliamentary Proceedings.” Manchester Guardian, 27 July 1858, 3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Purchas, Samuel. Purchas His Pilgrimes, book 2 of 5. London: William Stansby for Henrie Fetherstone, 1625, §2.1.4, 8. Early English Books Online.
Rayburn, Alan. Oxford Dictionary of Canadian Place Names. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford UP Canada, 1999.
Victoria. “Queen Victoria Names British Columbia, 24 July 1858.” Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 5100111. Accessed 8 July 2021.
Image credit: Paul Stahr. “Be Patriotic,” c.1917–18, gouache on paper. National Archives. Public domain image.