Savona (Post Office & Station) adopted 7 June 1927, NOT Port Van Horne. Confirmed 21 June 1946 on 92I. Identified as Savona (Post Office) in the 1953 BC Gazetteer. Form of name changed to Savona (community) 28 February 1983 on 92I/15.

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

After Francis Savona (François Saveneux), a stockraiser, who settled here before February 1859 and established a ferry across the Thompson River. A Corsican, his surname was so difficult to pronounce that he was known by the name of his native city, Savona. The ferry crossing is identified but not named on Lieut. Mayne's Sketch of the Fraser Canyon, 1859. The settlement that grew up adjacent to the HBC post on the north shore became known as Savona's Ferry. Savona's Ferry Post Office was opened 2 July 1866, W.H. Mouat, postmaster; closed in 1870; re-opened 1 June 1881. During subsequent CPR construction a townsite was laid out on the south shore and called Port Van Horne, after Willian Cornelius Van Horne, CPR General Manager. The settlers from Savona's Ferry relocated to the townsite but continued to refer to their settlement as Savona. See also "Ranching in the Southern Interior Plateau of B.C." by T.R. Weir, Geographical Branch Memoir 4, Ottawa, 1964, p.81; also Akrigg, British Columbia Place Names.

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

"Francois Saveneux settled here on the south shore in 1858 to run a cable ferry across "Boute du Lac", catering to miners who were then swarming into the country, mostly from the States. It seems to have been a profitable enterprise, and was run in conjunction with the HBC wharf and warehouse on the north shore, where a tiny village grew. Saveneux died in 1862 but his wife continued (to run) the ferry for a few years, and in 1870 it became a government operation. Following CPR construction the village moved to the south shore, and was known briefly as Van Horne. The CPR dignitary apparently regarded such a small place as beneath his worth, so the name reverted to Savona's Ferry, contracted to Savona about 1910." (Mary Balf, Place Names of the Kamloops District, Kamloops Museum, 1978)

Source: included with note

Pronounced "SAV an-aw" by residents, who are amused when visitors mis-pronounce the name "sa VONE ah", like the town in Italy.

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