Moreland City Council’s new name revealed

The new name of Moreland City Council has officially been chosen, after a vote by just 6000 of the municipality’s residents.

The new name for Moreland City Council has been officially approved, now to be known as Merri-bek.

More than 6000 citizens of the municipality were suveyed before the result was revealed on Wednesday night.

Almost 60 per cent of those people supported the name change.

Mayor of Moreland Councillor Mark Riley said he was delighted that the name Merri-bek would soon be in circulation.

“Changing the name of our city to Merri-bek is reconciliation in action with traditional owners,” he said.

“Now that the name is formally approved, we have started to get ready to use ‘Merri-bek City Council’ publicly and the community will start seeing Merri-bek in use later this month.”

The name translates to ‘rocky country’ in Woi-wurrung language and was suggested to the council by Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung elders.

Merri-bek was one of four options presented to voters; they were given the choice between three Indigenous names, or to keep the name as Moreland.

Indigenous elder Ian Hunter says the word ‘Merri-bek’ doesn’t exist in his language. Picture: Jason Edwards

Julian, a spokesperson from the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation and the son of a Wurundjeri elder, said the name change was a “step in the right direction” for Indigenous recognition and cultural awareness.

“I think if people have a problem with it, it’s because people generally don’t like change,” he said.

“There’s a big lack of knowledge and cultural awareness about Indigenous matters, and this gets hard when politics start to get involved.

“In the big scheme of things, it’s really minor but it means a lot to our community – there are so many issues out there you could put your energy towards instead of getting upset over a name change.”

The vote came after Moreland received a letter from the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation objecting to the retention of the name due to its ties to an 18th century Jamaican slave-trading estate.

However, a Wurundjeri elder objected to the changes.

Ian Hunter said Merri-bek was not the right translation and that neither word existed in his language.

“‘Bek’ isn’t a word in the Wurundjeri language and the construction Merri-bek isn’t grammatically correct,” Mr Hunter said.

He said that ‘Biik’ was the closest word that translated to ‘country,’ while he could not trace the origins of ‘merri’ in his language.

The name change will legally take effect from Monday September 26.

Originally published as Moreland City Council’s new name revealed