Placenames evidence for NSW Pidgin

Abstract

NSW Pidgin is documented from fragmentary source material, and evidence is sparse for its probable nineteenth century spread through Queensland to northern Australia. I adduce another source of data bearing on NSW Pidgin’s formation and spread, that found in placenames. I argue that NSW, and northern Australia too, there are ‘Pidgin placenames’: ones that are neither purely of Indigenous origin, nor entirely imposed by the incoming colonists and settlers. The study considers a NSW Pidgin landform word widely incorporated into placenames (balga ‘hill’), the NSW Pidgin words gabun ‘big’, ngarang ‘little’, budjari and merrijig ‘good’, yarraman ‘horse’, piccaninny ‘child’, blackgin and lubra ‘Aboriginal woman’. The study also covers some words derived from English, such as blackfellow ‘Aboriginal person’ and sugarbag ‘native honey’. Unlike a lot of introduced placenames, the Pidgin placenames were likely formed by local residents, and show a mix of the formal and semantic patterns of Indigenous versus introduced placenames. The study shows how the limited corpus of NSW Pidgin can be somewhat augmented, and throws a little more light on the geographic and temporal extent of NSW Pidgin. Show more