Adopted 4 January 1910, as labelled on George Dawson's 1877 map of the Southern Interior of British Columbia.

Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office

Spelled "Quequealla River" on Lieutenant Mayne's Sketch of Part [Fraser Canyon] of British Columbia, 1859. Spelled "Coquhalla River" on Trutch's 1871 map of British Columbia. Spelled "Kwee Kwe ah la" elsewhere (map/document title/date not cited)

Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office

"Rev. William B. Crickmer kept a sort of diary...sketches and script... One sketch is of a man in European dress: coat, waistcoat, shirt, bowtie, moustache & his hair parted, and beneath it in pen printed: 'Quaqualla, an Ordained Chief of the Fort Hope Indians, BC.' .....must have been the first form, about 1860... of the spelling of Coquihalla." (December 1959 letter from Major Matthews, Vancouver City Archivist, file H.1.36)

Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office

An [Indigenous] name, originally given to the river, means "greedy or hungry waters". See also Coquihalla Lakes.

Source: Provincial Archives of BC "Place Names File" compiled 1945-1950 by A.G. Harvey from various sources, with subsequent additions