I\u2019ve recently come upon an example which illustrates a combination of both concerns: one where official placenaming has drawn on the notorious naming booklets.This case study begins in 1865 with the posting of SA Police trooper Samuel Gason (c1842\u201397)<\/a> at Lake Hope in Dieri country, where he made some of the earliest notes on the Dieri language<\/a>. These were published first as Gason\u00a0(1874), and then reprinted a few times notably by Curr\u00a0(1886:75\u2013107). Gason\u2019s (1874) vocabulary included the entry Akuna <\/span><\/strong>\u2018To flow (as water flowing or running)\u2019. We can recognise this word as the Dieri (Diyari) intransitive verb ngaka-rna <\/span><\/em>\u2018flow (of water), blow (of wind)\u2019 (Austin\u00a02014:20). As Austin\u00a0(2013:246) observed, Gason didn\u2019t record word-initial velar nasal \u014b (ng <\/span>in the modern orthography), he just omitted it; and he often wrote the letter u <\/span><\/strong>for the low vowel a <\/span><\/em>(and wrote oo <\/span><\/strong>for the high back vowel u<\/span><\/em>, as for example in his mundroola <\/span><\/strong>for mandru-lha<\/span><\/em>, a word I recently guest blogged <\/a>about).<\/p>\n Akuna<\/strong> was repeated (on page 88) in the Curr (1886:75\u2013107) reprint of Gason\u2019s work, and then in turn appeared as the very first entry, Akuna<\/strong> \u2018Flowing water\u2019, in Sydney John Endacott\u2019s (1923:7) influential naming booklet:<\/p>\n Akuna kept the leading position in at least the first four editions (to 1944) of Endacott\u2019s booklet, and was excerpted in a list of suggested house names published in a letter to an Adelaide newspaper (Anonymous 1937). By the 9th enlarged edition (Endacott 1955) Akuna<\/strong> had dropped to ninth position, still high on the first page of names \u2014 and just below an added entry Akoonah<\/strong> \u2018Flowing water\u2019. We can infer by the way that Endacott\u2019s booklets provided the name for Akuna St in central Canberra (Civic and Reid)<\/a>, gazetted in 1956, because the stated origin \u201cAboriginal word meaning \u2018flowing water\u2019\u00a0\u201d matches the gloss. Similarly, a booklet offering\u00a0 \u2018musical Aboriginal words\u2019 (Anonymous 1980) must have copied Akoonah<\/strong> \u2018Flowing water\u2019 from Endacott.<\/p>\n The spelling Akoonah was introduced, it appears, by Kenyon (1930:9) who listed Akoonah<\/strong> \u2018Water (running)\u2019 (C[entral].A[ustralia].). The entry was repeated in the later editions Kenyon (1951:7) and Kenyon (1982:2) as Akoonah<\/strong> \u2018Water running\u2019 (C.A.). Cooper (1949:5) and Cooper (1952:5) had Akoonah<\/strong> \u2018Running water\u2019, which was excerpted in a list suggested house names published twice in the Australian Women’s Weekly<\/em> (Anonymous 1961:29 and Anonymous 1966:35). Cooper (1969:6) shortened the word to Akoona<\/strong>. Ingamells (1955:13) had the entry Akoonah<\/strong> (L[ake].E[yre].) \u2018Running water\u2019. Cooper\u2019s geographic designation and the word \u2018running\u2019 in the gloss hark back to Gason\u2019s vocabulary, and implies that Cooper did not copy from Endacott, but probably from Curr (or another version of Gason). Rex Ingamells (1913\u201355)<\/a> (of Jindyworobak<\/a> fame) was from Adelaide and could well have copied from Cooper, but the more specific geographic designation suggests he was aware that Gason was the source. I have not found another possible language record behind Akoonah<\/strong>, and I take it to be a respelling of Akuna<\/strong>. Kenyon (thinking \u2018words are spelt in the ordinary English way\u2019 1982:iii), or whoever introduced Akoonah<\/strong>, was presumably was trying to overcome the ambiguity of sound indicated by English u<\/strong>, but the wrong \u2018correction\u2019 was unwittingly chosen (Akana<\/strong>, say, would have been better). The appended Table’s columns show the publication lineages of the variants.<\/p>\n The reference to flowing or running water has clearly appealed to many agencies when they were selecting a name, because \u2018Akuna\u2019 or \u2018Akoonah\u2019 has been applied to over forty suburban streets, avenues, drives, closes, courts, and a rural lane; most of them are indicated on these two custom Google Maps. (You can click the ‘full screen’ button, top right of each map, to see details and change the view.)<\/p>\n![\"AKUNA](\"http:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/AKUNA-Endacott-1923.png\")
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