What’s in a name? : Scottish settlement and land plot names and settler colonialism in nineteenth century Inverness County, Cape Breton

Abstract

The application of place names by Scottish colonizers is a well-studied field. However, those studies focus on the identification and classification of such names, with little emphasis on how these names actually came to exist. This thesis provides an in-depth analysis of those that exist in Inverness County, exploring two types of names: those applied to settlements, settlement names; and those applied by individuals to land granted them, land plot names. Through analysis of land petitions, maps, and post office records, this thesis charts the settlement of places that would come to have Scottish names and the emergence of Scottish settlement and land plot names within Inverness County to demonstrate that these names were introduced as a result of large-scale Scottish settlement. This contrasts with the place names that can be found in other parts of the former British Empire such as Australia, New Zealand and even other parts of Canada where Scottish names came to exist as a result of Scottish colonial involvement as administrators, explorers and cartographers. While both can be seen as part of the process of settler colonisation; the replacement of the Indigenous population, in the case of Inverness County, the Mi'kmaq, with an exogenous one, the Scots, the evidence that has been considered demonstrates that the names in Inverness County are distinct in the sense that they were introduced by the Scots settlers themselves.