Insular Toponymies: Place-naming on Norfolk Island, South Pacific and Dudley Peninsula, Kangaroo Island

Abstract

How do people name places on islands? Is toponymy in small island communities affected by degrees of connection to larger neighbours, such as a mainland? Are island (contact) languages and mainland languages different in how they are used in naming places? What is the human influence in the fieldwork situation when collecting placenames on islands? This book offers answers relevant to toponymists, linguists, island studies scholars, and anthropologists. Because of its personal and reflective nature in conjunction with formal linguistic analysis, it should also appeal to ethnographers who focus on exposing the writer and writing the researcher into the writing. While focusing on two island environments within Australia, I put forward several novel claims germane to (colonial) Australian (island) toponymy. These may also be relevant to Australian Indigenous toponymy and the linguistics of islands. However, because the methods and analyses are replicable, the results and implications are much broader reaching. This book provides the basis upon which further studies into island and non-island toponymies anywhere in the world can be viewed linguistically and ethnographically. Language contact in toponymy and the role of toponymic ethnography in linguistic and cultural analyses of toponyms are also explicated.