Anybody want to take a trip out to the Salish Sea? Where’s that, you might ask. Well, it seems there is a growing usage of the term “Salish Sea” to describe the waters that we now know as the Georgia Strait, the Straits of Juan de Fuca, and Puget Sound. In the last year that I have been seeing references to this place, I have wavered both ways on whether this is a good idea or not.

So far, no governmental unit, other than a single First Nations band in BC, have started using the name. However, it has been used in marketing by local tourism providers to give the area, perhaps, a nicer sounding and more cohesive name.

In general, I am not in favor of just changing the names of places, simply for the sake of changing their names. I am in favor of naming things by the name that was used by the original inhabitants of our area, if some of our early settlers named them for someone who had never even been in the area before. That concept would seem to apply here.

The three water landmarks that I mentioned previously were named after King George III of England, a Greek ship’s pilot who claimed to find the strait now bearing his name in 1592, and Peter Puget, the British naval officer who actually explored Puget Sound with Captain George Vancouver. I have no objection to any of those names, other than I would have an interest in finding out what they were originally called.

Now, this would be a simpler story if anyone could say that the original inhabitants of our area called this place the Salish Sea. Sadly, they did not. The term Salish Sea was coined to honor the Salish peoples who did inhabit the area prior to discovery by European explorers settlers, and their descendants who still live here today. That seems to be a noble cause, but one that I might only want to proceed with if there were some king of local consensus for renaming these three waterways into one unit.

Of course, who am I to complain. Even the name of my blog, Cascadia, is the name that only a few use so far to describe an area that generally includes Western Washington, Western Oregon, and Southwest British Columbia. If I am to accept Cascadia as a mainstream name for a place, why not the Salish Sea as its defining geographic feature.

The issue is out there and it is still young. I am open to any discussion that people might have on this subject.

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