The Canary Islands were named after dogs, not after canaries. In Latin “dogs” is “canariae.” There are three possible explanations for why the islands were named after dogs in ancient times.
The first explanation, according to ancient Rome’s Pliny the Elder, was because the islands were home to “vast multitudes of dogs of very large size.” The second explanation is that the island’s native inhabitants revered and worshiped dogs. The third explanation is the least interesting; it simply says that the original people of the largest island in the Canary Islands called themselves a word similar to “canari.” When the islands were discovered by outsiders, their word for themselves got transmuted and used to name the whole island group.
What is absolutely certain is that canaries (the birds) were named after the Canary Islands where they were first identified as a unique species.
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