The Mi’kmaq & their language

Port Royal Journal 13

On August 25, 1735 the parish priest of Saint-Jean-Baptiste of Port Royal registered the marriage of Mi’kmaq Charles Perisse and Marie Grand Claude. The young couple were recorded with their baptismal names but might have used traditional Mi’kmaw names in daily life.

The registers of Port Royal record some of the earliest transcriptions of names and language of the indigenous people to the land called Mi’kma’ki, in the district they call Kespu’kwitk, and along the shores of the rivers Te’wapskik. In fact, the ending of many Mi’kmaw place names e’katik – meaning « the place of » is the most probably origine of the word Acadie.

Follow the link to the Mi’kmaw Place Names Atlas in the sources below.

The Port Royal Journal is a series dedicated to revealing the stories of everyday life in the community.

Sources: An Acadian Parish Remembered

The Nova Scotia Archives; https://novascotia.ca/archives/acadianhttp://mikmawplacenames.ca/
The Registers of St. Jean-Baptiste, Annapolis Royal, 1702-1755
https://novascotia.ca/archives/acadian/

𝑀𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑂𝑢𝑟 𝑆𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠 / 𝐷𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑂𝑢𝑟𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑣𝑒𝑠 /m𝑎𝑝a𝑛𝑛𝑎𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑠.𝑐𝑎