New Found Names: The Trinity-Conception School Name Conundrum
I’ve always been fascinated by names, of places and otherwise. I imagine this is in large part due to the fact I live in Newfoundland with its truly inventive naming traditions, and this is why I have always wanted to learn more about the fascinating names in our province. However, I didn’t imagine I would be inspired to write my first Newfoundland names article by a drive I’ve taken many, many times; the drive from St. John’s to Hants Harbour.
My family has a cabin in Hants Harbour. The existence of an apostrophe in the word “Hants” is agreed upon by no one, least not the Provincial government and the Town itself. The drive to HH is littered with signs of both spellings, but that’s an article for another day.
This article is instead about something else one sees after driving across the barrens to the west coast of the Trinity-Conception Peninsula before heading north to Hants Harbour; the elementary school located in Winterton. Driving past this school isn’t anything out of the ordinary: a simple K-6 school in a simple building on the right of your vehicle. The school teaches approximately 65 students living as far south as Heart’s Content and as far north as New Melbourne, a far cry from the 200 or so attending the school when it opened in 1973. The school amalgamated three different denominational schools into one, and it was called Perlwin Elementary.
This merging of schools was common at the time, and Perlwin was just one example of how rather than each town and religion having their own school, there would be one larger school created to manage a larger region. It wasn’t originally anticipated just how far Perlwin’s reach would go (Hants Harbour Elementary didn’t become part of it until it shut down in 1997), but the goal was certainly to bring as many kids to one school as possible. But this non-denominational renaming and amalgamation isn’t what I find interesting. I’m interested in the name.
The name “Perlwin” is a portmanteau, a combination of two or more other words, coming from the two towns the school is closest to: New Perlican and Winterton. Perl-Win, Perlwin.
On the surface, there’s nothing too interesting about the name, names are combined all the time. But if you continue driving Route 80 north past Winterton, and Hants Harbour, and Old Perlican, you will reach Bay de Verde, which has another portmanteau’d school name: Tricon Elementary. Tricon, along with the similarly named Tricon Pharmacy, combines the two bays found on either side of this peninsula, Trinity and Conception, into one, simple, fantastic name. And this isn’t all.
Continue along Route 80 from there south, past Burnt Point, Northern Bay, and Western Bay among others, and at the bottom of the peninsula you will pass a string of three communities in a row: Perry’s Cove, Salmon Cove, and Victoria. These three communities share an elementary school and-
I think you can see where this is going.
Persalvic Elementary. The crown jewel of Newfoundland and Labrador elementary school naming. The ever-rare, triple portmanteau, leaving simple portmanteaus like Labradoodle and mockumentary in the dust. In true Newfoundland fashion, this name is only matched in its insanity by a classic triple-threat dish best served hearty; the turducken.
I cannot emphasize enough how much I love this name. It’s a corny sort of childish brain teaser, and perfect for elementary school students to figure out just a few grades in. It’s painfully obvious as soon as you know its origin, but before you might ask, “Persalvic, is that a local name?”
In all my research of the 255 other schools currently operating in Newfoundland and Labrador, I believe only one could be a portmanteau, that being Tricentia Academy in Arnold’s Cove. The meaning here is also somewhat obvious, being that Arnold’s Cove is on the isthmus between Trinity Bay and Placentia Bay. While not as exciting as Persalvic, it is certainly a well crafted portmanteau name that deserves recognition.
That makes four total confirmed schools in NL that have amalgamated names. Just four of 258 (in the Newfoundland & Labrador English School District). And they’re all on or near the same peninsula. While I haven’t been able to figure out what exactly is the cause of this, and I likely never will, hopefully someone reading this article will know a bit more about the history of these fantastic names and who created them. And that is, in essence, the purpose of this article. If anyone out there knows the person, board, or organization that created these names and this peninsula-specific phenomenon, please let me know. These heroes of NL naming tradition deserve to be recognized.
Thanks for reading! This is my first time writing anything like this, so if you have any feedback, I would love to hear it. I’m also hoping to write more articles like this, so if you have any suggestions, those would also be greatly appreciated.
Outside of writing bizarre, niche, name-based articles on Medium, I am the Start-up Development Coordinator for Genesis. If you’re looking to start a tech-based venture with high-growth potential in NL, please reach out to lflanagan@genesiscentre.ca and check out our Evolution program!
