Tantramar or Beauséjour Township?
Those are two possible names for an area that will result from the merger of Sackville, Dorchester and other nearby communities.
The amalgamation will create a territory that’s been dubbed Entity 40, pending the choice of a new name.
Last month, the Elected Officials Advisory Committee formed a subcommittee to lead the naming process.
On Tuesday, a member of that group posted an update on social media, and asked for feedback on the potential monikers.
“We have spoken to the local historical groups and had input from the provincial topographers,” Dorchester village councillor Robert Corkerton said in a Facebook post.
The chosen name will be an “umbrella name for the entity,” and existing place names won’t actually change, he added.
“The local names of the areas in which we live are not changing, our postal addresses are not changing.”
The post included some background about the two choices. Tantramar has its roots in the French word tintamarre, meaning great noise.
“The first French Acadian settlers in the area who arrived around the last quarter of the 17th century are said to have heard great flocks of geese or maybe the incoming tide that made a great noise,” the post stated.
“They used the word tintamarre to describe this noise and, eventually, an Acadian hamlet was given the name Tintamarre before the expulsion of 1755. When anglophone settlers arrived in the region in the 1760’s, they kept the name, and after decades of different spellings, it became Tantramar in the second half of the 19th century.”
The name Beauséjour also originates with the French Acadian settlers.
“Eventually, the name Beauséjour appeared to identify a hamlet,” according to the historical sketch. “When French military forces built a fort in 1750 close to the Missaguash River, they named it Fort Beauséjour or Fort de Beauséjour.”
Beauséjour becames Fort Cumberland after its capture by British forces in summer 1755.
“Today, the name Beauséjour lives on as the name of the federal riding in southeastern New Brunswick, an important hotel in Moncton (Delta Beauséjour), and numerous businesses and cultural groups, such as the Moncton choir Choeur Beauséjour,” the post stated.
To provide feedback about the potential names, send a message to entity40nb@gmail.com.
