Aquaforte: One town in the Avalon area that has an interesting name in terms of its linguistic derivation, is the town of is Aquaforte One would assume it comes from French, and if that was the case it would loosely translates as "strong water".

What is of interest, however, is that it is a town with a French name in the midst of an area that have predominantly either English or Irish background.

The town is actually at the end of a long fiord, which was known by cartographers as far back as 1519 as R da aquea, or River of Water.

In later maps, dated 1544 the fiord was shown as la baye de rislet (translation unknown). At the end of the fiord, there is a relatively large waterfall, hence the "strong water", that empties into the harbour.

It is known that as far back as the mid 1600s the harbour was used by seasonal cod fishermen, from North Devon, England as a safe refuge from the elements, however it wasn't until the early 1800s that it actually developed into an actual "settlement" with full-time residents.

According to the ENL.com website, R. da aguea evolved into Agoforta and eventually Aquaforte. The community is quite small, even by Newfoundland's standards, with only 80 citizens recorded at the last census in 2016.

Used with permission from "Uncovering the Origin of 1001 Unique Place Names in Newfoundland and Labrador" 2021 Jennifer Leigh Hill

Address of this page: http://nl.ruralroutes.com/Aquaforte