Box 4 Folder 5: New South Wales place names, 1899-1903 - Page 6

[Page 6]                                                                                                                           379

Wakool (Wakūl or Wogul) the Port
Jackson word for one), concerning the
genuiness of which there can be no doubt.
On the Darling River one gets the word as
"Wākola. The root  would appear to
be Wā (Kool or Kūl being a formative
ending) and as w  and m  often
interchange in dialects we can compare
the Upper Murray 'Mala' and the
Tasmanian 'Marawa' both meaning
one. From this it seemed to me
there could be little doubt that  in the
Wakool rrver (a tributary of the Edwards R.)
one had the same word with the same
meaning, and yet I was astonished to
hear a totally different meaning given.
5.  I have written the foregoing merely to
show the excessive care that has to be  
exercised when adopting the meanings
of certain names etc. owing to
(a) Early corruptions of aboriginal words.
(b) Corruptions made by aboriginals them-
selves in endeavouring to pronounce
English words. (c) Compound words coined
by the natives, and (d) Confusion  
caused by different interpretations in
different localities & dialects of words
identically the same or very similar..
(6) As is, no doubt, generally known  
Aboriginal names are invariably sig-
nificant and places were generally
named from some local occurrence, some
leading landmark, or some peculiarity
of the locality.   The same river, for
instance, may have a number of names