Names and Naming: Speaking Forms into Place (The Land is a Map: Placenames of Indigenous Origin in Australia)

This chapter of The Land is a Map: Placenames of Indigenous Origin in Australia, titled Names and Naming: Speaking Forms into Place, explores the neglect of using Aboriginal names of people and places. The paper focuses on the significance that Australian Indigenous people in general give to the meaning and use of proper names of people and places and how with some exceptions, this neglect continues today. It investigates this neglect through the reflection of the prevailing preoccupation of anthropologists and linguists with the semantico-referential meanings and functions of language rather than with the culturally shared notions and images all names evoke, provoke and embody.