Kuringgai

Kuringgai (also spelled Ku-ring-gai, Kuring-gai, Guringai, Kuriggai) ([kuriŋɡai],) is an ethnonym misapplied to an Indigenous Australian people who once occupied the territory between the southern borders of the Gamilaraay and the area around Sydney, and a historical people with its own distinctive language, located in part of that territory.

Origins of the ethnonym

In 1892, ethnologist John Fraser edited and republished the work of Lancelot Edward Threlkeld on the language of the Awabakal people, An Australian Grammar, with lengthy additions. In his "Map of New South Wales as occupied by the native tribes" and text accompanying it, he coined the term Kuringgai to refer to a hypothetical people he believed inhabited a large stretch of the central coastline of New South Wales. He regarded the language described by Threlkeld as a dialect of a larger language, variations of which were spoken by many other tribes in New South Wales, and, in order to define this perceived language block he coined the word Kurriggai/Kuringgai:

we have now come to know that this dialect was essentially the same as that spoken by the sub-tribes occupying the land where Sydney now stands, and that they all formed parts of one great tribe, the Kuriggai.

Fraser lists a number of tribes to the north of his assumed Kuriggai language family: the Gamilaraay and their sub-tribes, the Ualarai and Weilwan. In the text accompanying his map, he states:

The next great tribe is the Kuringgai on the sea coast. Their taurai (hunting ground or territory) is known to extend north to the Macleay River, and I found that southwards it reached the Hawkesbury. then after, by examining the remains of the language of the natives about Sydney and southwards, and by other tests, I assured myself that the country thereabout was occupied by sub-tribes of the Kurringgai.

Norman Tindale, in his 1974 classic survey of all known Australian tribes, was dismissive of Fraser's conjecture as "poor" in details, and "unquestionably the most inaccurate and garbled account ever published about the aborigines. Many of his tribal names were pure artifacts", each created to subsume under an invented label several different tribal identities: thus his fantasy of a Paikalyung crushed together 10 tribal units; his Yunggai nation throws together the Anēwan, Jukambal and the Kwiambal; his Wachigaru dissolves into one fictional unity the Banbai, Gumbaynggirr, Ngaku and some of the

Dunghutti.