Stadacona in the context of Saint-Charles River (Quebec City)

Jacques Cartier (Breton: Jakez Karter; 31 December 1491 – 1 September 1557) was a French maritime explorer from Brittany. Jacques Cartier was the first European to describe and map the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the shores of the Saint Lawrence River, which he named "The Country of Canadas" after the Iroquoian names for the two big settlements he saw at Stadacona (Quebec City) and at Hochelaga (Montreal Island).

Jacques Cartier, author of now-lost maps and accounts of his voyages, was the first European to describe and name this region and its inhabitants—at a time when the Spanish had already settled in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America, and were beginning their conquest of Peru.

While a variety of theories have been postulated for the name of Canada, its origin is now accepted as coming from the Laurentian language word kanata, meaning 'village' or 'settlement'. In 1535, indigenous inhabitants of the present-day Quebec City region used the word to direct French explorer Jacques Cartier to the village of Stadacona. Cartier later used the word Canada to refer not only to that particular village but to the entire area subject to Donnacona (the chief at Stadacona); by 1545, European books and maps had begun referring to this small region along the Saint Lawrence River as Canada.

From the 16th to the early 18th century, Canada referred to the part of New France that lay along the Saint Lawrence River. In 1791, the area became two British colonies called Upper Canada and Lower Canada. These two colonies were collectively named the Canadas until their union as the British Province of Canada in 1841.

Chief Donnacona (died c. 1539 in France) was the chief of the St. Lawrence Iroquois village of Stadacona, located at the present site of Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. French explorer Jacques Cartier, concluding his second voyage to what is now Canada, kidnapped Donnacona along with nine other Iroquois captives, and brought them to France, where Donnacona died. Later Cartier would make a third voyage to the same area.