[tasogare]

I wouldn't affirm Canada transliteration come from Cantonese without serious proof. Not too long ago (about a century [1]), the initial now romanized by <j> was written with <k>. I'm not specialist of the phonetic changes that happen during that time in the involved languages and dialects, but it is totally credible that 加拿大 comes from Mandarin. The initial involved in 加 seems to have change "recently". This also explain the Peking/Beijing thing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFEO_Chinese_transcription

[thaumasiotes]

The Peking / Beijing thing is indeed the same thing you see in Canada / jianada. Peking / Nanking / etc. do not come from Mandarin.

Read your own link:

> The transcription of the EFEO did not borrow its phonetics from the national official Standard Mandarin. Rather, it was synthesized independently to be a mean of Chinese dialects, and shows a state of sounds a little older in form

[tasogare]

Reading is good, understanding the implications is better. Standard Mandarin is newer than the period at which Canada would appear as a loanword in Chinese, so of course it is not drawn from that language. But that doesn't mean it is Cantonese either. Moreover, I wrote Mandarin (a Chinese languages with a variety of dialects), not Standard Mandarin (the language taught at school).

In particular, for the Beijing case, South Mandarin is involved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_postal_romanization#Ma....