Nootka Island is an island near Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. It contains 534 km² (206 sq mi) of area. It is separated from Vancouver Island by Nootka Sound and its side-inlets.
Europeans named the island after a Nuu-chah-nulth language word meaning "go around, go around." They likely thought the natives were referring to the island itself. The Spanish and later English applied the word to the island and the sound, thinking they were naming both after the people.
In the 1980s, the First Nations peoples in the region created the collective autonym of Nuu-chah-nulth, a term that means "along the outside (of Vancouver Island)". An older term for this group of peoples was "Aht", which means "people" in their language and is a component in all the names of their subgroups, and of some locations (e.g. Yuquot, Mowachaht, Kyuquot, Opitsaht etc.).
Famous quotes containing the word island:
“If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from others lands, but a continent that joins to them.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)