Do Canaries come from the Canary Islands? Are the islands named after the birds, or the other way around?
Yes, we first meet up with the Canary bird in the Canary Islands, off the coast of Africa, in a line with Spain. The birds are named after the islands, not the other way around. Curiously, the Romans named them the “Dog” Islands, for the inhabitants bred an extremely large type of dog. As might be expected, the ever pragmatic Romans were more interested in fierce, guard dogs, than in little singing birds! “Canary” is a corruption of “canis”, Latin for dog.
