Linguistics, geography, and the potential of Australian island toponymies

ABSTRACT

Australian placename studies have focused on documenting toponymic histories and issues of concern mainly for placename taxonomy and etymology. Language-external factors such as geographical and environmental conditions have not been of great interest to Australian toponymists. This article assesses the role of geographical and environmental constriction of island places on their toponymy. It considers whether or not island locations breed ‘insular toponymies’ or placename histories inaccessible and not readily accessible to outsider researchers. The case studies are Norfolk Island, South Pacific, and Dudley Peninsula, South Australia, two island environments within political Australia. The results demonstrate that the degree of insularity of the toponymies of the two island environments is driven more by geographical and social factors than linguistic elements. The results put forward several ways in which geographers, linguists, historians, toponymists, and Australian studies scholars could work together and collaborate to better understand Australian island places.

KEYWORDS:

• Australia/Australian Territories
• Dudley Peninsula
• Kangaroo Island geography and language
• geographical meanings
• Norfolk Island language
• placenames

Acknowledgements

Thanks to David Blair for comments and discussions which led to some of the initial seed ideas developed in this article and to Emil Mittag for proofreading assistance. Tom Sapienza provided cartography assistance. The helpful comments of two anonymous reviewers for Australian Geographer are acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Because my argument is exploratory, I will not provide any contrastive data from mainland, continental, and what could be regarded as non-insular environments. While such analysis is the subject of further investigation, the speculative and inductive thesis only requires examination of the particulars of my island case studies and their apparent and obvious insularities, not a comparison with non-island and non-insular toponymic situations.

2. Where the first two volumes in this series focus entirely on toponymy in Australia, the third volume has several chapters with an international focus on the documentation of toponymies in minority languages, languages spoken by a minority of the population of a territory.

3. Although the language name ‘Norf’k’ is common in modern linguistics, I prefer the name ‘Norfolk’. I use ‘Norfolk’ when referring to the Norfolk Island language and the full ‘Norfolk Island’ when referring to the name of the island.

4. See Nash (2013) for more details on the role of Norfolk in placenaming.

5. Microtoponymy can be defined as names for small geographical features, the placenames of a specific local area, and unofficial placenames that few people know.