{"id":3652,"date":"2008-01-01T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-01T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2008\/01\/how-do-you-say-that-in-aboriginal\/"},"modified":"2011-02-05T07:49:19","modified_gmt":"2011-02-05T07:49:19","slug":"how-do-you-say-that-in-aboriginal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2008\/01\/how-do-you-say-that-in-aboriginal\/","title":{"rendered":"How do you say that in Aboriginal?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the “pleasures” that come with being known as a specialist in Australian Aboriginal languages is the string of requests one gets to translate various things into “Aboriginal”, especially names for pets, houses, boats or even children (one of my favourites happened when I was at La Trobe University and someone called wanting a translation for “Happy Anzac Day”). Sometimes the reverse holds and the “meaning” of a word “in Aboriginal” is asked for. Nowadays there are websites devoted to this task, such as this one<\/a> which promises: “Thousands of ABORIGINAL NAMES for your DOG, CAT, HORSE, PET AND CHILD! From Chinaroad Lowchens of Australia”. This site at least mentions “these names\/words are taken from several different Australian Aboriginal Languages”, though none is mentioned by name.
\nRecently, David Nash pointed out to me that an Aboriginal word, which he identified as coming from the Diyari language, had made its way onto a koala at the Planckendael Zoo in Belgium (located near Antwerp). The zoo established an “Australia” section in May 1998 where various Australian animals are exhibited, including koalas, each of which has been given an “Aboriginal” name. Information about the koala names can be found in both Dutch<\/a> and French<\/a>, Belgium being officially bilingual. Here is my translation of what they say:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

About the Koalas
\nAs you will have noticed, our koalas have rather distinctive names. They all have a nice Aboriginal name with a meaning:
\n
\n* Coolongalook means “he who loves to climb”
\n* Alkina is Aboriginal for “moonlight”
\n* Caloundra is the name of an Australian town
\n* Ditji-Toda means “day”
\n* Ditchie-Doonkuna means “sunrise”
\n* Bengero is an Aboriginal word for “two”. He was so named because this is his second name. His first, unofficial, name BennyDu’by.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Along with David, I too was intrigued by this as I immediately recognised two of the names (Ditji-Toda and Ditchie-Doonkuna) as being from Diyari, the language traditionally spoken along Cooper Creek east of Lake Eyre; the others needed a bit more work.
\nDitji-Toda also appears on the Planckendael website in photograph labels (go here<\/a> and type ditji in the Zoeken<\/i> search box) as “Ditji-Toda” “Ditji Toda” “ditji todo” and “Ditchie-Toda”. The source for these various forms seems to be J. G. Reuther’s massive 1901 Diyari-German dictionary; in Scherer’s English translation on page 109 we find “ditji toda<\/b> = ‘a stationary sun’, (i.e. 12 o’clock midday)”. This appears to consist of the Diyari word which I write in practical orthography as diji<\/b> meaning ‘sun, day’, plus another element which neither I nor my language consultants could recognise (volume IV of Reuther’s dictionary has an entry “toda” meaning ‘midday’; in Reuther’s spelling this could represent either thuta<\/b> or thurda<\/b>).
\nDitchie-Doonkuna or Ditchie Doonkuna (who was born on 10th July 2002 and tragically died on 11th October 2003) is easier. This is clearly taken from the vocabulary list “Mt Freeling to Perigundi Lake” contributed to Volume 2 of Curr 1886 by Samuel Gason; on page 87 we find Ditchiedoonkuna – Sunrise” (there is an online copy [.pdf] here<\/a>). The Diyari form diji durnkarna<\/b> meaning ‘sunrise’ consists of the noun diji<\/b> ‘sun, day’ plus the verb durnka<\/b> ’emerge, come out’ inflected for its participial and citation form with the suffix -rna<\/b>. In Diyari tradition, each night the sun goes into diji mingka<\/b> ‘sun hole’ and emerges from it in the morning.
\nCoolongalook is a bit of an enigma to me. According to the caption<\/a> to his charming photograph from Kansas City Zoo “his name means “a high place” in Aborigine” (sic.) There is a town called Coolongolook on the mid-north coast of New South Wales inland from Forster Tuncurry (for some historical background see here<\/a>; there is a map here<\/a>), and a Coolongalook River, which flows into Wallis Lake, and Coolongalook State Forest (whose climate statistics can be found here<\/a>). I have not been able to track down the Aboriginal origin of the name.
\nAlkina appears on various baby name websites here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a> as being “Aboriginal” and meaning “moon”. A google search shows it is a very popular girl’s name. I have not been able to identify the original source.
\nFinally, “Bengero” meaning “two” comes from William Thomas’ “Succinct sketch of the Australian language” in R. Brough Smythe’s The Aborigines of Victoria<\/b> page 119 (available online [.pdf] here<\/a>). This is the Melbourne language usually called Woiwurrung (Blake, BJ (1991) ‘Woiwurrung, the Melbourne Language’ in RMW Dixon and BJ Blake (eds) Handbook of Australian Language: Volume 4, The Aboriginal Language of Melbourne and other grammatical sketches<\/b>, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, pp. 31-124).
\nSo, the koalas have two names that come from Diyari, one from Woiwurrung, and two remain unidentified. Any suggestions about them from blog readers are welcome.
\nFootnote<\/b>
\nDavid Nash tells me that according to Jim Wafer -ook<\/b> is a place name ending in the Coolongolook area; Amanda Lissarague has done work on the language from there called “Kattang” or “Kutthung” (located on this map<\/a>) which is now also referred to as the “Lower North Coast Language”. No published information on forms resembling Coolongolook seems to be currently available. Perhaps the forthcoming Kattang Dictionary and Grammar<\/a> from Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-operative will solve the mystery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the “pleasures” that come with being known as a specialist in Australian Aboriginal languages is the string of requests one gets to translate various things into “Aboriginal”, especially names for pets, houses, boats or even children (one of my favourites happened when I was at La Trobe University and someone called wanting a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australian-linguistics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3652"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4542,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3652\/revisions\/4542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}