New Found Names: Apostrophe or Not to Be
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 why I have always wanted to learn more about the fascinating names in our province. In my last article, I mentioned a specific place in NL with a name that always fascinated me, Hants Harbour. I mentioned that was an article for another day. This is that day.
I. Love. Hants Harbour. This tiny town of ≥300 people sits precariously atop the northwest tip of the Trinity-Conception Peninsula, located on the Avalon Peninsula of the island of Newfoundland (a peninsula on a peninsula on an island is truly just scratching the surface of NL weirdness, so don’t worry about it).
Hant’s Harbour is home to a whole assortment of treasures; from its scenic lighthouse, to the “great wall”, to the road with many, and only, cemeteries on it, to the incredibly calm and tranquil harbour itself.
One amazing thing about Hants Harbour is Larry Tuck and his incredible webpage, which I highly recommend making your homepage. Larry’s webcam has been operational since 2007, sitting precariously on a tower-like structure at the top of his driveway. With more than 650,000 views, the webcam gives a great view of Main Road and Vince Green’s, the only, and best, store in town. (UPDATE: I’ve sadly tried every trick I can think of to make it work, even going as far as to open Internet Explorer, but to no avail. If anyone can get the livestream up and running, please let me know your ways, I would love to see that lovely view of nothing again.)
While the town itself is peaceful, and a truly amazing place to visit each summer, there is a silent conflict. And that conflict is about one thing and one thing only. An apostrophe.
The apostrophe conflict:
You may have noticed in reading this article that I have been spelling the name of this town seemingly at random. As you drive into Hant’s Harbour you will pass many signs and feel a similar feeling. Many of these signs have been erected by the Town itself, many by the Provincial government.
What no one can seem to agree on, is:
Is there an apostrophe after the t in Hants? Is it Hants Harbour or Hant’s Harbour? Hant’s or Hants?
As you can see from the above images, the drive into town does not make it any easier to decipher the true spelling. For whatever reason, there are two correct spellings of the town name according to who you ask. So which one is actually correct?
The argument for the apostrophe:
So, to begin this analysis, let’s say that HH has an apostrophe (I’ll refer to the town as HH from now on, for simplicity). That would logically indicate that “Hant” is a person’s name, and they are somehow associated with the town, a la Joe Batt’s Arm, Kelly’s Island, and Percy’s Cove. There is evidence online that Hant is a last name that actually exists (Monga Bay has it ranked as the 37869th most common surname in the US), but I have been unable to find any way in which this name is associated with the town or NL. Nonetheless, we now know this is a distinct possibility.
Aside from the fact that a last name Hant does actually exist, the apostrophe has some big players on its side. Wikipedia and Google Maps both spell our beloved town’s name with the precarious punctuation. While it’s clear that neither of these resources will provide a definitive answer on the spelling of HH’s name, these websites are certainly influencing the direction in which HH is spelled moving into the future. This reasoning seemed the most obvious to me at first, until I took a trip.
The argument against the apostrophe:
The most compelling, and damning, piece of evidence comes from a different part of Atlantic Canada: Hants County, Nova Scotia. I ended up in Hants County, just outside Halifax in September of this year, and that is what piqued my interest in finding out the true meaning of Hants Harbour. The lack of apostrophe in Hants County, unlike the Harbour, has an attributed meaning.
In this case, Hants is a shortened term for Hampshire, a county in England. Hampshire had a different name in Old English, Hantescire, and this is what the shortened “Hants” is in reference to. The oldest known recording of this Hantescire spelling dates back to the 1086 Domesday Book, an extensive survey of England completed by William the Conqueror. The no apostrophe side certainly has history on its side.
An editorial note: If it seems like I am more personally excited about the lack of apostrophe spelling, it’s because I am. I must admit, I have a significant editorial slant towards this spelling, and I have never been entirely sure why. While attempting to remain completely impartial in this simple analysis, I thought best to let you all know how this author truly feels.
The wildcard:
In researching this article, I searched far and wide to find a distinct, specific reason for why Hants Harbour has the name it has today. The closest I’ve come was this fantastic oral history compiled by Edgar C. Janes for the Newfoundland Quarterly in 2000. The article gives some great details on where the population of HH originally comes from, West Country, Devonshire, England, but the true revelation came later.
In his article, Janes says that HH was originally called by a Portuguese name: Anse Havre. While I’m unsure about any Portuguese translations for these words, any romantic language speaker will recognize them as French.
“Anse” translates to “cove” and “Havre” translates to “haven, refuege, or harbour”, among other things. If this detail of the town is true, and we translate it directly, that literally means that Hants Harbour was first called..
Cove Harbour. Cove. Harbour.
Should this line of explanation be correct (and let’s face it, it’s the most realistic as of yet), it would mean that the town is neither named for a person named Hant or a region named Hants, and it was literally named for the fact that it is both a harbour and a cove. And I can’t think of anything more Newfoundland than that.
The truth(?):
Rather than spending my time simply writing this article and stewing over one simple keystroke, I did what any rational person would do; I went to HH with my family over the Thanksgiving long weekend.
The original plan while there was to survey some locals to get opinions from people who actually know what they’re talking about, unlike me. Sadly, however, due to a combination of nervousness and store closures, I did not end up speaking to a single local during the weekend. However, all was not lost.
While there, my brother and his girlfriend walked the short hike from the neighbouring town of New Chelsea back to HH. It’s a wonderful hike, and one that I have walked approximately ten bajillion times, so I decided to pass. As they neared the end of the hike however, they stopped to read an information sign on the side of the trail. And on that sign, they found the truth.
Well, maybe the truth.
Both sides of the argument:
Behind the condensation-filled plastic covering seen here is a short description regarding the history of HH, most likely placed here by the town itself or the people who created the d’Iberville Trails, on which this trail lies. This sign elaborates on some key details that I had been hypothesizing about above, and lands on a decision: Hant’s has an apostrophe!
Most notably, this sign states that “the name of the community [of HH] comes from the common abbreviation for the southern English County of Hampshire… Hant’s.” This essentially confirms the Hants theory from above, but curiously this sign includes the apostrophe in the abbreviation, while all other sources I have found do not. The sign goes on to detail the earliest written evidence of the name, written in 1697 by Bu Abbe Jean Basdoin, a Chaplain with d’Iberville’s French army, who referred to it in his writing as “Lance Arbre”, thus tying in a second theory. The sign then suggests that the chaplain was aiming to create a phonetically accurate French translation of the name, ending up with Lance Arbre.
So what does this mean?
Well, more than anything, while I thought this sign would help clear the waters around this bizarre name, it has in fact only muddied them further. Did the name come from an abbreviation for Hampshire County? Did Chaplain Basdoin actually give the town its name in 1697? Does the Hampshire abbreviation have an apostrophe or not?
In the end, I may never know the truth. I will continue coming back to the town of Hant(‘)s Harbour as frequently as I can in the coming weeks, months, and years. I love this town, and whatever the spelling of its name is. If the “L’ance Arbre” theory is correct, and Hant(‘)s Harbour’s name evolved from Cove Harbour, then the apostrophe truly doesn’t matter, and either spelling can be correct. And that lack of answer makes me both content and curious. So I’ll keep searching. And I’ll keep spelling it without the apostrophe.
Thanks for reading! This is been something I’ve wanted to write about for some time, and 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 for topics, 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!
Credit for apostrophe used in banner .gif:
apostrophe by Sumana Chamrunworakiat from the Noun Project
