July 7, 1924, Bella Coola, BC: Mr. Sundayman’s name
Our Tuesday evening Zoom group was talking about this Sunday name the other day. (Email me for the Zoom link to join us!)
“Sundayman” in British Columbia is a family name that seems to come from Chinook Jargon.
Here’s Mr. Sundayman from the Bella Coola Valley, photographed exactly 100 years ago. We’re told he was of Dakelh-ne (Carrier Dene) ethnicity.
Image credit: Canadian Museum of History
The Sundayman‘s Meadow Indian Reserve No. 3 is part of the Lhoosk’uz Dene Nation, formerly known as Kluskus First Nation, also of that ethnicity.
In at least some parts of the province, Sundayman clearly comes from shánti-mán, literally ‘song-man’. That was one of the officers in Indigenous villages officially under Catholic Church control in the late 1800s and into the 1900s, which included many Dakelh communities.
A ‘song-man’ led hymns as well as being in charge of getting people to attend Mass.
Many Native languages in BC lack a meaningful distinction between “s” and “sh” sounds — so shanti-man was pronounced often as sándi-mán. That’s literally ‘Sunday-man’, which is also a reasonable folk understanding of such a man’s title. Most Masses are held on Sundays.
An indicator of ongoing thinking by local people about the meaning of Mr. Sundayman’s name is this: a current (2024) tribal council member is named Rosa Chantyman, “representing the Chantyman family”.
