What's in a name?

Something that’s really struck me since arriving in Australia, and which Bill Bryson also notes in his excellent Down Under book, are the small number of incredibly commonplace names.

To make the point, there is, for example, a Macquarie Harbour, Macquarie Island, Macquarie Marsh, Macquarie River, Macquarie Fields, Macquarie Pass, Macquarie Plains, Macquarie Lake, Port Macquarie, Mrs Maquarie’s Chair, Macquarie Point, and a Macquarie town. Not content with this, there’s also a Macquarie bank, a Macquarie University, a national ‘Macquarie’ dictionary, a Macquarie shopping centre, Macquarie Lighthouse, Macquarie Park and Macquarie Hospital, not to mention a main ‘Macquarie’ street running through central Sydney.

There’s then a Darling Harbour, Darling Drive, Darling Island, Darling Point, Darlinghust, Darlington, Darling Downs and Darling Ranges, a slew of Daringtons and a River Darling. Apparently, what isn’t called Darling or Macquarie is often called Hunter or Murray. Awfully confusing.

Making matters worse there are also a lot of places named Sturt or Stuart such as the Sturt and Stuart Highways, both of which leave Adelaide, one of which takes you to Sydney, the other 3,994 kilometers off to Darwin. Clearly would be a tad costly mistake to miss the ‘a’ when you are shooting around the ring road.

So who were these people who so successfully managed to implant their family name all over an entire continent?

Perhaps unsurprisingly it turns out they all had what might be termed a well defined sense of self. Some were more deserving than others to have the legacy.

• Lachan Macquarie was one of the first colonial administrators of Australia (indeed it was he who first used the term ‘Australia’ in official documents) and seems to have had some relatively progressive ideas like re-integrating convicts back into positions in society.
  


• Ralph Darling on the other hand appears to have been guilty of both that common mix of egoism and tyranny, for example insisting prisoners “worked in irons that the example may deter others from the commission of crime” and reportedly many other torturing to death.


• Sturt and Stuart were both Australian explorers of the 19th Century; the former who made the first pioneering explorations inland from Botany Bay, the latter who was the first to traverse the continent from south to north.