Sunday, October 08, 2017

Wagga Wagga Hey


They say that Wagga Wagga is so good that they named it twice.

They are wrong. The second Wagga in Wagga Wagga is used as an intensifier. Wagga means 'crow'. So Wagga Wagga means 'many crows'. This reduplication of names is a fairly common theme in Australian place-names. Another example is the town of Tiba Tiba, which means 'lots of water'.

The Reduplication Map of Australia is an interactive map of around one hundred place-names in Australia which are reduplicated names. You can filter the place-names shown on the map by state or by UTM zone.


Most, if not all, of these reduplicated names come from indigenous languages. If you are interested in what these places look like then you should have a look at Muru View. Muru View superimposes the original indigenous place-names of Australian locations on top of Google Maps Street View - in 3d!

The application uses place-names used in historical surveys from the Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia to map the original indigenous place-names of locations in New South Wales. It superimposes the place-name labels for each of these locations on top of its Google Map's Street View.

No comments: