Have you ever wondered about the origins of the name of the place where you live?
'What’s in a name?' has been a perennial question, popularly
deriving from a misinterpretation of Juliet’s question to Romeo in William
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet where she states
What's in a name?
That which we call a rose
By
any other name would smell as sweet
Names do matter, especially place names. In areas that have
been colonized, and where places have been named by the colonizers, there has
been a push in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries for renaming or
acknowledgement of the names indigenous people had for those places.
For instance, in 2019 in Cardiff in Wales the council
decided that new streets would be given Welsh names which reflected the history
of the area aiming to achieve an equal number of Welsh and English names across
the city. Moreover, streets which did not have Welsh names represented on signs
could be given bilingual names. Another instance is the endeavour to change
Francoist street names in Madrid in order to eradicate memorialization of his
brutal regime.
In our own area Girringun National Park was a renaming of
the national park that was created in 1994 with the name Lumholtz National
Park, after anthropologist Carl Lumholtz. Renaming occurred in 2003. Though
Lumholtz conducted a valuable anthropological survey of the Herbert River
Valley his observations were made with the skewed eye of a white man studying
an anthropological specimen whom he regarded with unveiled disdain.
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| Image Source: :https://nationalparksaccom.com.au/2016/03/10/girringun-national-park/ |
The park is located in the custodial lands of Warrgamay,
Warungnu and Girramay Traditional Owners. Neighbouring Traditional Owner groups
also hold significant connections to places located within the park. Renaming
the park acknowledged the importance of the area to those peoples and the
significant Aboriginal creation sites, song lines and story places that exist
within, traverse or are located in close proximity to custodial lands and
waters now located within the park.
If we look briefly at the Herbert River Valley we can
observe that white men—settlers and explorers—largely named the geomorphological
features they observed in complete ignorance of the names already given to those
features by the Indigenous landowners. In the case of the former Lumholtz
National Park the trend was alive and well in 1994.
The features were given names according to physical
attributes, for example it patently clear why Valley of Lagoons, Stoney Creek
or Waterfall Creek gots their names. Alternatively features were named after
prominent male identities. Hence the Herbert (named Bagirr by the Warrgamay)
was named after colonial secretary and later Queensland’s first premier, Robert
G Herbert while Stone River was named after Henry Stone, Ingham after the
failed planter William Bairstow Ingham, Halifax after George Montagu-Dunk, Earl
of Halifax Secretary of State in England from 1763 to 1765, and so on.
Disproportionately few to the European male appellations
were Indigenous names. Examples though, are Jourama Falls (singing or murmuring
waters), or Toobanna (plenty of big rushes near water).
The same was for European female place names. The latter
include: Francis Creek named after Mrs Francis Allingham of Waterview Station,
Helen’s Hill and Mount Helen named after a daughter of William Ewan of
Waterview (its Indigenous name of Mandabin or Mandalin was ignored) and Mount
Cordelia, Mount Catherina, Cordelia Creek and
Catherina/Catterina Creek named after the enigmatic Caterina Cordelia —
the spelling of whose christian name is disputed, while it is not known whether
Cordelia was her surname or a second christian name.
Names do matter and place names are changed reflecting new
historical understandings and realities, acknowledgement of cultural sensitivities and
efforts to redress past wrongs.
Sources:
“New streets in Cardiff to be given Welsh language
names,” BBC News, published 26 September 2019.
“Madrid begins renaming streets that honour Franco regime,” AFP/The
Local, 27 April 2018.
Girringun National Park Management Statement 2013, https://parks.des.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0022/166360/girringun.pdf
Family history of the district: Landmarks, streets, parks or
buildings named after local ancestors, Herbert River Express, Ingham, n.d., p. 20.
Queensland place
names search,
https://www.dnrm.qld.gov.au/qld/environment/land/place-names/search#/search=Catherina%20Creek&types=0&place=Catherina_Creek6521;
and Map. Parish of Cordelia, County of Cardwell, Survey Office, Department of
Public Lands, Brisbane, October 1922.Variously spelt also Caterina or
Catterina. Local signage for the creek reads Catterina Creek.
