New Found Names: Our Provincial Pups
How did the Newfoundland and Labrador dogs get their names?
My girlfriend loves dogs. All kinds. She wants a puppy tremendously. So instead of getting us a puppy, I decided to write about dogs, and specifically some dogs with names relevant to all of us on the eastern edge of Canada: our provincial dogs; the Newfoundland and the Labrador.
If you asked people the world over about the words Newfoundland and Labrador, it’s highly likely that they would first connect those words with the well-known breeds of pups. And why wouldn’t they? These breeds, especially the Lab, are prominent in Western culture, known for their loyalty and family-friendly nature. The Labrador Retriever, according to the American Kennel Club, has reigned supreme as the most popular dog in the United States every year since 1991. That’s staying power.
As a fun aside, just to really illustrate the magnitude that we’re dealing with here, in 2017 there were 88,547 Labrador retrievers registered by the American Kennel Club. That’s more than three times the number of total people living in the region of Labrador.
So why then are these ubiquitous dogs named after our tiny, Canadian province? The information available online gives a muddied answer, but I think I’ve found where these dogs’ names come from nonetheless. To understand that, we need to go back to the common ancestor that these two dogs share, the granddaddy of NL dog breeds, the St. John’s Water Dog.
The St. John’s Water Dog is commonly thought of as the first dog breed to truly originate in NL, as an amalgam of the English, Irish, and Portuguese dogs brought to Newfoundland by the English, Irish, and Portuguese settlers (go figure). The St. John’s Water Dog was known for its patience and penchant for fishing, again much like its human counterparts. The breed’s popularity steadily grew through the 1700s and early 1800s, and during this time an offshoot breed began to form; a larger version of the dog likely created by cross-breeding with mastiffs. To distinguish between the two, people began referring to the original as the lesser Newfoundland dog and the offshoot as the greater Newfoundland dog. Some of you may already see where this is going.
The lesser dog, ever impressive, was imported to England frequently throughout the 1800s, and through some additional cross-breeding the breed began to take on another, third variant. The Earl of Malmesbury was the first to decide that the region of Labrador deserved a little dog-name love, and called this new breed Labrador in an 1887 letter. Over time, the distinction between the Labrador and the greater Newfoundland, now just called the Newfoundland, began to become, well, more distinct. Labradors got smaller and lighter in colour, while Newfoundlands got bigger and darker, until eventually we ended up with the two beloved dog breeds we have today, however unconnected to their birthplace.
You may now be asking yourself, but what of the St. John’s Water Dog? Unfortunately, the capital breed met a tragic end. Through a bizarre combination of restrictions on dog ownership in NL, to encourage sheep raising, and restrictions on dog importing in the UK, to discourage rabies, the St. John’s Water Dog saw its population dwindle drastically. The breed was eventually declared extinct in the 1980s.
This is how, over the past centuries, two unique dog breeds emerged from the small region of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Their rise to popularity is a different story, one that I feel significantly under-qualified to guide you through. What one can say with some certainty is that these two dog breeds are the main representatives of Newfoundland and Labrador’s around the world. And they do a damn fine job at it.
Thanks for reading! As a proud Newfoundlander who loves dogs and the origins of names, this article was a no-brainer. Hopefully it helps out someone looking to get a better understanding of these good boys got their names.
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!
