As part of sweeping local government reforms that will see many New Brunswick communities amalgamate in January 2023, the provincial government announced proposed names for 77 local governments and 12 rural districts on Wednesday.
Many completely new names are on the table, like Nouvelle-Arcadie in the Rogersville area, Belle-Baie which will encompass Petit-Rocher and Beresford among other small communities, Butternut Valley and Maple Hills, which will be the new name for the entity that includes Irishtown.
Many names stayed the same such as Grand Bay-Westfield.
Local Government and Local Governance Minister Daniel Allain said at a press conference on Wednesday that many of the names staying the same reflects what the residents expressed during public consultations.
“We consulted with New Brunswickers for the last 18 months,” he said.
He said the names should become official in a matter of months.
“The next step is regulations,” he explained. “So these entities will ask Cabinet to formalize the names and that should be done this summer.”
Historian Maurice Basque, who served as a toponymy advisor for the renaming process, said he and fellow advisor Ken Harding attended the public consultations and received many suggestions.
“We gave (the government) advice saying maybe there’s already lots of name focusing on forests or rivers,” he said noting many of the names denote geographical features of the areas, with English and French names being chosen across the province.
He said First Nations groups were consulted on the changes.
“The names that were chosen of First Nation origin had to be already names of officially incorporated entities,” he said, giving the examples of Bouctouche, Caraquet and Shediac.
He said it may be possible to add a translation in Wolastoqiyik or Mi’kmaq to the new entity names in the near future.
“But you would have to sit down and have more than a conversation with our First Nation neighbours, out of respect for their naming tradition, for their language, for their culture,” he said.
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