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

Abstract

With his book Insular Toponymies: Place-naming on Norfolk Island, South Pacific and Dudley Peninsula, Kangaroo Island, Joshua Nash opens up a new area for placename studies, pointing to “the need to develop the scope of Australian and international toponymy beyond mere place name listings and to expand related folk etymologies” (3). Although there have been no follow-up studies to Nash’s research, he has stirred the interest created by Charles Nordhoff and James Hall in their Bounty trilogy, the account of the actual mutiny in 1789 and its aftermath. As an echo of the dramatic ways in which the lives of the Bounty crew changed, Nash explores the changes that took place in language as the descendants of Alex Smith and Ned Young, mutineers who survived the bloodletting, moved from Pitcairn Island to Norfolk Island. A revision of his doctoral thesis at the University of Adelaide (2001), the book consists of 123 pages plus a remarkable section of 162 pages containing lists of placenames from the two Australian island environments that provided the setting for his research. The choice of Norfolk Island in the southwestern Pacific—an archipelago consisting of three islands, Norfolk, Nepean, and Philip—and Dudley Peninsula at the eastern end of Kangaroo Island, off the coast of mainland South Australia, meets the author’s goal to map the toponymic features of insular environments. This is an ambitious task to accomplish in places where the boundary between insider and outsider may not be easy to cross, and in fact, in Nash’s own words, “[a]s a rank outsider it took time to gain trust and establish friendship with knowledgeable people” (38). Not surprisingly, then, from the very beginning, throughout the eight chapters into which the book is divided, Nash points to the relevance of his fully immersive or “ethnographic” experience on Norfolk Island. Being able to establish connections with the islanders and to share with them both the personal and the work-related spheres of their everyday lives played a crucial role in his research. It is thanks to the long stretches of time spent on the islands (especially in Norfolk) and to the ties established that, as it may be expected when fieldwork is at stake, he was able to observe interactions between participants, interview people, and gain access to very useful primary and secondary sources. From this standpoint, the story and the implications of his meeting with the 84-year-old Norfolk Islander Bev McCoy are emblematic: