When did the name 'Canada' start appearing on maps?

Discover Canada records this in one direct sentence. The guide writes: Cartier heard two captured guides speak the Iroquoian word kanata, meaning "village." By the 1550s, the name of Canada began appearing on maps. The decade the test wants is therefore the 1550s.

The story behind the name is in the same passage. Discover Canada says: "Between 1534 and 1542, Jacques Cartier made three voyages across the Atlantic, claiming the land for King Francis I of France." During those voyages, Cartier heard the Iroquoian word kanata, which means "village." Within roughly a decade, that word had crossed from spoken Iroquoian into European written use, and "by the 1550s" mapmakers were placing the name on their charts of the new continent.

The 1550s date is therefore the moment Canada the country-name first appears in print and on geography. Discover Canada uses the phrase "the name of Canada," emphasising that the word was the country's earliest cartographic identity — before there was any single political entity called Canada, and centuries before Confederation in 1867.

The Cartier voyages and the kanata story sit at the start of Discover Canada's European-arrival timeline. The Vikings reached Labrador and the island of Newfoundland about 1,000 years ago. John Cabot mapped the East Coast for England in 1497. Jacques Cartier's voyages between 1534 and 1542 followed — and from the kanata moment in those voyages came the name that, by the 1550s, had begun appearing on maps.

The question is testing whether new citizens have noticed how Discover Canada dates the appearance of the country's name on maps. The guide commits to "by the 1550s" — and ties that to a specific event a few years earlier when Jacques Cartier heard the Iroquoian word kanata.

The wrong answer choices each test the reader. The 1490s would be the era of John Cabot's first voyage in 1497 — too early for the name Canada. The 1600s belong to Champlain and the founding of New France — too late for the first appearance. The 1700s are British-conquest territory in the guide. Only the 1550s matches.