The name Bay of Despair may be an English corruption of the French name Baie d'Espoir.
[6] However, the French cartographer Bellin referred to the bay as "Baie du Desespoir" on his 1743 map "Carte de l'Isle de Terre-Neuve".
[7] Therefore, the actual sequence may have been from "Baie du Desespoir" to the English literal translation "Bay of Despair", which appears as early as 1733 on a Henry Popple map,[8] and then to a French corruption of this, namely "Baie d'Espoir".
The English name "Bay of Despair" can also be found in a navigation guide written by James Cook.
[9] Bay d'Espoir is the feature location of Farley Mowat's 2006 autobiography "Bay of Spirits", in which Mowat chronicles his time living on the southwest coast of the island of Newfoundland.