Skip to content

What's in a name?

I think we need some guidelines, rules, regulations and possibly even laws when it comes to name changes.

Whether it is changing the names of people, places, geographic features or government departments.

Also, the people proposing the name change should have to give a cost estimate, an impact assessment and some reason or justification for the move. There should be a debate or consultation process. If this is going to use taxpayer money, there should also be a vote. If the proponents of the name change win the vote, then the per cent of vote they get is the amount of taxpayer money they can use and the rest of the costs should be born by the name changers.

Just think about it for a moment. If you wanted to change your name, you would have to get a new passport, drivers licence, credit cards, change the listing for phones, emails, bills and various accounts. It would involve some fees and a fair bit of time.

So, changing the name of a government department is a major undertaking. When the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development changed its name to Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, I found cases of envelopes at the dump. They were being thrown out because of the name change - and that was only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to costs. All the old stationary had to be thrown out, along with the old brochures, documents and forms. New ones had to be printed up. Business cards, name plagues, department credit cards and accounts had to be changed as well as telephone and email accounts. It would take months to do and I am sure it cost millions of dollars.

A few years later, they changed the name to Indigenous Affairs and Northern Development. Now they plan to create two departments Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs and another called Indigenous Services. If changing a name costs millions, then splitting a department is going to cost tens of millions and take months, if not years, of chaos and confusion to implement.

I am sure that those doing this think it is going to improve things, but I am not so sure. I wonder how many years will go by before yet another name change. I have never understood why Indian/Aboriginal/Indigenous affairs get lumped in with Northern affairs. Why isn’t there a department of southern development or non-indigenous affairs.

I think Christopher Columbus came up with the term Indian because he thought he had arrived in India. For some reason, the name stuck for all the people who lived in North, Central and Southern America. But they are a very diverse group and to link the Dene, Hopi, Aztec, Mayan and Incas plus all the other groups, tribes, city-states, nations and empires under one group seems a bit of a stretch.

I can understand getting rid of the term Indian,m but I thought Aboriginal was a poor choice because the people in the Americas are about as related to the Australian Aboriginals as the Europeans are. I am not sure Indigenous is much of an improvement because Indigenous is a very descriptive word with a lot of qualifiers. I just wonder how long it will be before another name comes up.

However, I am concerned with all the money spent and wasted on name changes. I checked and when the current government came in, they renamed six different departments. I can’t help but think some of these changes were a waste of time, money and resources. I would rather see the money spent on actually solving problems or trickling down to those who really need it. So, maybe we do need some rules about name changes and who pays for them.

It wouldn’t hurt.