If you went strictly by the breed's name, you would be justified in assuming that the Lab originated in the province of Labrador, on Canada's northeastern coast. It's not quite that simple, though. Breed historians offer a number of possibilities for how the Lab acquired its moniker.

One theory is that the name comes from labrador, the Spanish word for “farm worker” (surely appropriate for this hard-working breed) or from the cani di castro laboreiro, the dogs of Portuguese fishermen. As early as the fifteenth century, Spanish and Portuguese fishermen were known to troll the cod-filled waters of the Grand Banks, southeast of Labrador and the neighboring Newfoundland region. Fishermen often brought along water dogs to help them pull in their nets, retrieve objects, rescue people who fell overboard, or even to swim messages from boat to boat. When heavy fog descended, the dogs' barks helped warn away other nearby boats. Another theory is that the Lab is descended from the Pyrenean (France) mountain dog, brought to the Labrador-Newfoundland area by Basque shepherds.