There are two theories for St. John's.
There's the romantic theory - that John Cabot sailed into St. John's Harbour on the Feast of St. John the Baptist in 1497 and, voila.
And there's the real story - that Portuguese sailors named it Sao Joao in the 1500s after a similarly-shaped harbour in the Basque country.
At least it means more or less the same thing. Other parts of the city, and other communities on the island, got bastardized.
Take Cape Spear, just outside St. John's. It was original Cabo Esperanza (Cape of Good Hope). Then Cap d'Espoir (Cape of Hope). Then, finally, the English bastardized it to Cape Spear.
That's not as funny as Bay Despair (Baie d'Espoir).
There's even one town here whose name was bastardized over the centuries without changing hands and languages. Brickhouse became, over the years, Brigus.
There are a lot of random little towns in Newfoundland with these convoluted naming histories. Take Carbonear for example. From Wikipedia:
Quote:
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The town of Carbonear is one of the oldest permanent settlements in Newfoundland and among the oldest European settlements in North America. The harbour appears on early Portuguese maps as early as the late 1500s as Cabo Carvoeiro (later anglicized as Cape Carviero). There are a number of different theories about the origin of the town's name. Possibly from the Spanish word "carbonera" (charcoal kiln); Carbonera, a town near Venice, Italy where John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) had been resident; or from a number of French words, most likely "Carbonnier" or "Charbonnier," meaning "coalman."
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Or the St. John's neighbourhood of Quidi Vidi (where my mother's family comes from). They say, today, that it's bastardized Italian for "Beautiful Sight" - but from its founding in the early 1600s, I doubt an Italian has set foot there.
