Nova Scotia is one of Canada’s Maritime Provinces and both its past and its present are tied closely to the maritime life of fishing, shipbuilding, and transatlantic shipping. It became the site of the first permanent European settlement in North America north of Florida when the French established a fur-trading post at Port Royal in 1605. Early explorers gave the area the name Acadia, probably a corruption of the word used by the native Mi’kmaq. The province’s present name, which means “New Scotland” in Latin, was the result of brief Scottish claims to the region in the 1620s.