WERE THE CANARY ISLANDS NAMED FOR CANARIES?
You might think that islands swarming with wild canaries and called the
Canary Islands were named for those birds. But you would be wrong.
The Canary Islands are near the coast of Morocco, a country in Africa.
Long ago, when Spanish explorers landed on one of the islands, they saw
large, fierce dogs there. So they named the island “Canaria, which means
\”Isle of Dogs.’ Canaria comes from the Latin word cams, which means
“dog. So the islands got their name because of the dogs, and the wild
birds got their name from the islands.
The people of the islands capture wild canaries and train them and sell
them to many places in the world for pets.
Another place where canaries are trained and sold is the Harz Mountains
in Germany. There, the canaries are trained by “schoolmasters” to sing
in a special way.
This is the harbor at Las Palmas, one of the thirteen Canary Islands.
