What’s in a name? How a government project forced surnames on Inuit – CBC

With Project Surname, Inuit had to choose and register family names, which were not common in their culture

Oct 06, 2020

After a lifetime of spelling his name the way white priests and teachers told him to, in 1999 Peter Irniq finally decided to change his last name to the traditional Inuit pronunciation.

His mother named him Irniq, which means son in Inuktitut, when he was born in an igloo in 1947 on the land hundreds of kilometres from Naujaat, Nunavut. His name had come to her in a dream.

Peter Irniq, who also goes by Piita, is a former commissioner of Nunavut and a well-known guardian of Inuit culture and language. Like many Inuit, Irniq’s name has evolved and changed over the last century, as a result of colonization, residential schools and Project Surname.