Talk:Canuck

message: === Joke Content ===
The content added 23:59, 9 February 2009‎ looks like it's pretty clearly a joke or hoax. I'm thinking particularly of "Bart Bandy's Lexicon of Canadian Etymology (Don Mills, Ont., C. Farquharson, 1994)". C. Farquharson - i.e. Charlie Farquharson - is a pseudonym of the well known Canadian comedian Don Harron. Bart Bandy is the most famous character of Canadian comic writer Donald Jack. Moreover, I can't find any record of any book called "Bart Bandy's Lexicon of Canadian Etymology" existing, apart from in Wikipedia.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 156.34.32.79 (talk)  
===British-Canadian===
"Can-UK "Canada/United Kingdom" (A person of British-Canadian descent)"
* Is there any evidence for this claim? It sounds unlikely to me since the common use of the designation "UK" is relatively new. Canuck seems to date from the early 19th century. Prior to the last couple of decades, people most commonly used the "Great Britain" part of "the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". I could be off base here, so I won't change it yet. I'm hoping that someone will provide evidence that this is not just just an imaginative modern construction. Ground Zero 07:25, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm French Canadian and I actually thought Canuck referred only to English Canadians... --24.200.133.131 22:16, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

text: There's a suggestion it's related to Chinook here: [] 82.28.33.86 (talk) 18:59, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

text: Rootsweb is not a reliable source, and folk history is not folk history.  The story is without merit, and I'm from BC and have never heard it before (in fact, I come from about 6 miles from Kanaka Creek, and am familiar also with Kanaka Bar).  This ranks in the same conjectural silliness as the story about Haida and Kwakwaka'wakw actually being Polynesian (because Heyerdahl speculated on it, without any linguistic or historical basis for it, and people have treated it as fact, often vociferously).  I repeat, rootsweb is not a reliable source.Skookum1 (talk) 17:51, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Etymology and meaning

message: "Can-UK "Canada/United Kingdom" (A person of British-Canadian descent)"
* Is there any evidence for this claim? It sounds unlikely to me since the common use of the designation "UK" is relatively new. Canuck seems to date from the early 19th century. Prior to the last couple of decades, people most commonly used the "Great Britain" part of "the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". I could be off base here, so I won't change it yet. I'm hoping that someone will provide evidence that this is not just just an imaginative modern construction. Ground Zero 07:25, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: British-Canadian

message: 'It sometimes means "French Canadian" in particular' -- I have never encountered the word used in this way.  Has anyone else?  Rrburke 01:53, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm French Canadian and I actually thought Canuck referred only to English Canadians... --24.200.133.131 22:16, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: French Canadian

message: I have serious doubts on the derivation from Can + Inuk.  If the word is as old as the 18th century, contact with the Inuit, other than by whalers, was very minimal.  Significant contact with Inuit culture was only in the late 19th and early 20th century.  Inuktitut would have been almost unknown in New France or British North America.  Unless someone can come up with evidence that the word "inuk" was known at the time sufficiently to expect it to be used to derive Canuck, I'd say the etymology is bogus. Michael Daly 05:49, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There's a suggestion it's related to Chinook here: [] 82.28.33.86 (talk) 18:59, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Inuk and Chinook

message: The Hawaiian migrants theory isn't represented on the page at all.  From rootsweb:
"Many moons ago, in Canada's formative years when fur trading was all the rage, the fur trading companies searched for anybody they could hire who could wield a beaver trap. In the far west of Canada at that time, there weren't a lot of crowds. There were several Hawaiian islanders who came to the western shores of North America in search of, well, we don't know what -- but it sure as hell wasn't "nicer weather".
They worked out just fine. The Hawaiian word for "Hawaiian person" (or just a "person") is "KANAKA". Also, a "KANAKA HANA" is a worker. Still more, "KANAKA'E" is a foreigner. There's also a creek in Maple Ridge, a suburb of Vancouver, called "Kanaka Creek" though I'm not sure how that came about. Anyway, soon, the word KANAKA was used to describe these workers. Or in another version of history, all the people already living here were deemed by them to be "Kanakas", as in "foreigners".
As with all words, it soon become shortened and obliterated and KANAKA eventually became "Canuck", probably because some idiot who worked for the CBC said it wrong once (kidding)."
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.105.132.193 (talk) 17:58, 28 October 2007 
:Rootsweb is not a reliable source, and folk history is not folk history.  The story is without merit, and I'm from BC and have never heard it before (in fact, I come from about 6 miles from Kanaka Creek, and am familiar also with Kanaka Bar).  This ranks in the same conjectural silliness as the story about Haida and Kwakwaka'wakw actually being Polynesian (because Heyerdahl speculated on it, without any linguistic or historical basis for it, and people have treated it as fact, often vociferously).  I repeat, rootsweb is not a reliable source.Skookum1 (talk) 17:51, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Hawaiian migrants theory

message: In German the word Kanake describes a foreign person. Now given that German Americans are a pretty large group, and the German language in the United States is widely spread at some parts of the US along the Canadian border (even more in the 19th century, see the map) and the first footnote references Speaking Canadian English quoting Walt Whitman:
Growing among black folks as among white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.  
and given that Whitman grew up in an environment where German would have been a wildly spread language, I think it is reasonable to assume, that Canuck may come from the German language term Kanake, that is also pronounced the same.      
Tmw (talk) 15:37, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: German theory

message: There's still a reference to Canuck being used as an ethnic slur...  I've never heard it used as one or considered it one...  Any idea where this came from?142.59.135.116 07:03, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My uncle told me of how Americans called the Canadians "Canucks" in WWII and it was considered an insult by the troops.  Similarly, some Americans consider it an insult to be called a "Yank" (and not just southerners).  Michael Daly 05:29, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: So what was all the brouhaha over the Canuck Letter during the Muskie campaign?  that suggested to me it was a slur, but then we have the Vancouver Canucks.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.29.79.250 (talk) 16:45, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Derogatory

message: This article proposes a theory that Americans picked up the common phrase "Quelle canule", but it never explains what Quelle canule means, or why it would be a common phrase.  76.21.120.118 (talk) 19:07, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Addition : I am French (from France), and have absolutely never heard the so-called "common french expression" "quelle canule", nor am able to guess what it could mean. A "canule" in french is "a small flexible tube inserted into a body cavity for draining off fluid or introducing medication" (definition of the english equivalent "cannula" on WordReference.com (http://www.wordreference.com/definition/cannula), and I can't see any relation to the context. Melttogether (talk) 13:02, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: "Quelle canule" supposedly translated (in the American Revolution era) to "What a bore!" according to this collection of possible origins, (as collated by Bill Milner the first secretary to the Canadian High Commissioners to Australia (according to his email sig)), might be the origin of those paragraphs in our article. Just noting, no opinion. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:43, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

text: I am French also, and I either don't know what means "Quelle canule" but it might be in fact "Quelle canicule" which means "What a hot weather", which might have been a joke on the bad weather in Canada. JPLeRouzic (talk) 18:27, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quelle canule 

message: In German, the letter g has a k sound especially at the end of a word. At the beginning of a word, it sounds more like the g in game. It never has a j sound. The letter e has more of an a sound. The word genug sounds like ganuk.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.179.84.92 (talk) 11:24, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  The German theory 

message: Content added to the article by 162.136.192.1, and moved here by me, as unsourced and un-googlable (and the lead should summarize the article, not contain unique info). —Quiddity (talk) 22:58, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quenoc 

message: The first provenance of this term is 1835, and indications in other section are that it dates from the 18th Century.  Kanakas and French did intermingle in BC during fur trade days; many Metis families have both parentages/ancestries.....but the term was long established long before the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush in other parts of Canada.  The cite is fringe, IMO, speaking as someone widely and deeply read in British Columbia history.  Spurious; I've taken out the false claim, apparently in the cite, that it dates from the Klondike Gold Rush, which began in 1898, LONG after the term was already in wide use.  Doesn't matter what such a source says, sources can be wrong; this one definitely is.Skookum1 (talk) 07:51, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kanaka theory is wildly fringe 

message: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanoeka
is the VLamisch/dutch name for 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanukkah
are the 'dutch/francs' people jews people, or connected?
Are they 'people of the candle' ??
just a thoughed
85.149.83.125 (talk) 17:38, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: chanoeka