List of Australian place names of Aboriginal origin
Wikimedia list article
Place names in Australia have names originating in the Australian Aboriginal languages for three main reasons:
Historically, European explorers and surveyors may have asked local Aboriginal people the name of a place, and named it accordingly. Where they did not ask, they may have heard the place was so-named. Due to language difficulties, the results were often misheard and misunderstood names, such as the name of the Yarra River. There are a suspicious number of place names which translate as pretty and resting place, which may imply European romanticism, and no doubt a good deal of mispronunciation and corruption in general.
Australian governments have officially named many places, particularly suburbs, after Aboriginal people or language groups, such as Aranda or Tullamarine.
The place name has always been called thus by Aboriginal people, and Aboriginal people still live in the area. This is particularly so for Aboriginal communities, such as Maningrida in the Northern Territory. This is more frequent where non-indigenous settlement has been less dense, particularly in Central Australia and the Top End.
Watkin Tench, who arrived on the First Fleet in 1788, observed of the Aboriginal languages of the present-day Sydney area:
"We were at first inclined to stigmatise this language as harsh and barbarous in its sounds. Their combinations of words in the manner they utter them, frequently convey such an effect.
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