Drawing, toponymy, and linguistic pilgrimage

Abstract

This article scrutinises an ongoing concern with how the naming of landscape is informed by micro personal and macro cultural narratives. The author takes the position of a toponymist and linguistic pilgrim. The perspectives identify ways of understanding the meanings of place ascribed through language and placenames, the role of intention in language documentation, and relationships between the affect of place and belonging. Drawing is melded with processes of placenaming, specifically a single fishing ground placename recorded during linguistic fieldwork in February 2008 with an elderly man on Norfolk Island, South Pacific. The argument uses drawing as a method to reveal how elicited stories can reveal the meanings of placenames and the histories of observations that inform them. The view taken questions whether the discipline of toponymy could incorporate a more involved and evolved aesthetic dimension. New ways to contextualise observations about placenaming and documentation within relevant interdisciplinary contexts such as drawing research and cartography are offered.