Indigenous Bird names

[John Harris <>]

As to indigenous bird names, thank you Martin, quite correct. I was about to respond in a similar vein. Aboriginal languages have been my life work and I am very interested in plant and animal names. There are of course so many Aboriginal speech communities that there is probably no bird which has only one indigenous name. There are probably less than a dozen Aboriginal bird names in common use – Kookaburra, Galah, Gang Gang. Brolga, Budgerigar  and a few more. They were birds identified by name to European settlers by Aboriginal people very early in Australian colonial history and some of the names stuck. As settlement expanded European settlers carried the bird names  around the country with them and a few of them have survived. The onomatopoeic name kookaburra, for example, was carried all over Australia. The Blue-winged Kookaburra in the North has very different northern Aboriginal names and is not onomatopoeic either, sounding rather different to the southern (Laughing) Kookaburra. It is called Karrak in the west of the Northern territory.

Even into my lifetime, more Aboriginal bird names were in use especially in country areas but they have fallen into disuse except for a dozen or less.  

For those interested, around here, it was actually called kookaburra or very similar onomatopoeic name – guuguubarra in Wiradjuri, for example.

 

 

From: "" <>
Date: Friday, 23 March 2018 at 2:38 pm
To: Mark Clayton <>
Cc: chatline <>
Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] English bird name poll

 

WRT indigenous names, the question would arise of which indigenous names?  I am sure that for birds which are common to the various areas the indigenous people at Broome would have a different name to the people of Cairns to the people of Tasmania.  I suspect the Maori would all have used the same name.  

 

Martin