Some estimable but probably prosaic gentleman

Here we are approaching the ascent of Jarndunmunha (above), formerly and formally Mt Nameless.

This statement from Yinhawangka elder Lola Young is printed on one of the walls of the Karijini visitors centre:

You know the non-Aboriginal people named the biggest hill around here, at Tom Price, Mount Nameless. They didn't ask the Aboriginal people here if that place had a name already. And it had. Its name for thousands of years has been Jarndunmunha; there's nothing nameless about that. I think it is a matter of respect of cultures.

Jane Simpson has a recent post about the reclamation of the original name over on Transient Languages and Cultures. Jane also co-edited The land is a map: Placenames of indigenous origin in Australia which is well worth a snoop.

The introduction discusses (among other things) the naming of Mt Purvis in South Australia. The Arabana name is Ulyurla Palthiyangunga ('The Old Woman Busted') from a story of the ancestor Thunpila who carried his dead wife to this spot where her guts spilled out from her decomposing body. This event is recorded in the pink rocks that have eroded and fallen from the surrounding brown hillside. In 1908 'Moodloowardoo' wrote to an Adelaide newspaper:

Yet all this interesting if primitive piece of geological tradition, with its excellent moral inculcating abstemiousness, is lost under a small triangle with a dot in the centre, branded on our plans Mount Purvis, in memory no doubt of some estimable but probably prosaic gentleman.

Another "estimable but probably prosaic gentleman" in all-too-recent memory has an entire gorge named after him in Karijini. Below is an image of Hancock Gorge (nabbed from moblog.co.uk):
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And the gorge-ous face that launched a thousand ships…


I'd like to see a similar book on indigenous vs settler naming strategies for endemic flora and fauna. Enough of Gould's pied striated rufus pygmy geese already!

For an idea of the complexity of placenaming generally, have a read of Claire Bowern jousting with placename crackpots on Andrew Leigh's blog.