hello birding-aus people
I am a recent subscriber to this list and must admit it is one of the most
interesting roads I have taken on the "information highway", especially
since I am a certified bird nut. It's good to see that people are willing
to look out from behind their binoculars at the bigger picture occasionally
and take up larger scale environmental problems (and political ones too).
One thing I think we need to remember is that we are all on the same side.
The love of birds (probably all things natural) is what unites the people
who subscribe to such lists, and to quote someone or other "united we stand,
divided we fall" Anyway thats not what I wanted to comment about.
The issue of Aboriginal bird names is an interesting one. When Australia
was first invaded(bit of a contentious issue at the moment)there were about
700 different political groups in Australia which spoke an estimated 250
different languages. According to the book "Macquarie Aboriginal Words"
these languages can be broken down into 26 different family like groups.
With one group covering nine-tenths of the continent.
Even though the languages come from a common origin, the words for
individual bird names are extremely diverse. For example the Budgerigar is
called atetherre around Alice Springs, whereas just to the north of this
area, the Wilpiri community call them kumulyurru or ngatijirri (Goddard,
Aboriginal Bird Names, 1996). The Yindjibarndi in north-western Australia
call them batharra (Macquarie Aboriginal Words, 1996). Reed, 1996 in his
book "Aboriginal words of Australia" claims the Aboriginal name for
Budgerigar is betcherrygah or gidgerigar, but he does not state from what
Aboriginal language these names come. Maybe from around western N.S.W where
the early explorers first travelled and experienced massive flocks of birds.
Incidentally my parents told me when I was young that Budgerigar meant
"good tucker" but I don't know where they heard that.
So, for each species there was probably up to 250 different Aboriginal
names. I can understand why HANZAB has not included them all. Goddard in
his book "Aboriginal Bird Names" lists the Yankunytjatjara (also Central
Australia) name for the Willie Wagtail is tjintir-tjintir. It is said that
tjintir-tjintir always told tales and gave secrets away.
Cheers
Mike Jarman
From: Laurence and Leanne Knight <>
Reply-To:
To: David McDonald <>
CC: birding Aus <>
Subject: Re: birding-aus Bird raving
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 16:51:27 +1000
David McDonald wrote:
>
> I note that HANZAB has appendixes of Aboriginal names and commend the
> compilers for including these. Unfortunately the listings do not
indicate
> which languages/localities the names come from.
> David
>
It would be interesting to know how many different Aboriginal names
there were for pan-Australian species, like magpies and peewees etc.
Laurie
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