When changing times and attitudes mean a town’s name is no longer good enough

THE name of a town can be a source of immense pride among residents. But sometimes it can become a source of embarrassment, reminding people of long-past allegiances, fallen heroes, or even old prejudices.

1988. Farmer Joe Russo at Smoko, between Bright and Harrietville. Locals are indignant at the suggestion from an anti-smoking campaigner that perhaps the town should change it's name. Victoria. Towns. Neg: 880719/1 #hsinstagram

The name of a town can be a source of immense pride among residents, reflecting a rich heritage. But sometimes it can become a source of embarrassment, reminding people of long-past allegiances, fallen heroes, or even old prejudices.

This week Blacktown Council debated whether to shake off what is seen as a racist name or to embrace its past and keep its well-known moniker.

They decided there was still enough pride in the name not to get rid of it.

The name originally comes from the school for indigenous children that Governor Lachlan Macquarie relocated from Parramatta to the area in 1823. The institution, where children separated from their parents were educated in British ways, was given the name Black Town or Blacks’ Town, a name that stuck after the institution was closed.

Blacktown Council this week voted not to change its name.

Even before the school opened there was a strong indigenous history, not least their original ownership of the land, but also the first land grants given to any indigenous people in Australia were granted to Colebee and Nurragingy.

The name Colebee was one of the suggestions for a replacement name for Blacktown. But, while there is a proud indigenous heritage, some take offence to the word “black” and all of its negative and racist connotations.

It wouldn’t be the first place in Australia to contemplate changing its name. One of them was Heidelberg in Victoria, which was originally called Warringal, but was renamed by a land agent after an estate in the area owned by a German man. At the outbreak of war with Germany in 1914, citizens of the town (later a city) petitioned to have the name of the town changed to something less German. At a town meeting in September, 1914, the idea was rejected, but many other towns around Australia decided that Germanic names had to go.

HMAS Otway Oberon class navy submarine in Germanton Park, Holbrook.

One of the towns that was changed was the unfortunately named Germanton. Originally known as Ten Mile Creek when it was first settled in the 1830s, one of the first people to settle in the area was a German and it became unofficially known as Germanton.

That name became official in 1875 but at the start of WWI there were calls to change it. The council submitted the name Marlon, but were told that there was already a town in Queensland by that name and they also had the names Lonsdale and Kardoo rejected before they submitted Kitchener (after the British war secretary Lord Kitchener).

But that had already been granted to a new town near Cessnock. They finally settled on Holbrook, after submarine commander Lt Norman Holbrook, a hero of the naval force at the Dardanelles. A park in the town still bears the name Germanton.

Farmer Joe Russo of Smoko, was one of many locals, who in 1988, were indignant at the suggestion that the town should change it's name.

Hahndorf in South Australia was another town to undergo a name change during WWI, because of its German associations, yet it was actually named after the Danish captain Dirk Meinhertz Hahn, whose ship the Zebra brought migrants from Prussia who settled in the town in 1838. In 1917 the name was deemed too German and changed to Ambleside after the name of a railway station (which was named after a small town in the Lake District of England). But the change didn’t stick and it reverted to Hahndorf in 1935, resisting any attempts to change it when WWII broke out four years later.

There were very different motives for suggesting the citizens of the Victorian Alpine town of Smoko should change its name back in 1988. Legend has it the town got its name from diggers from nearby goldfields passing through and taking a smoke break there. An anti-smoking campaigner complained.

Locals never gave his suggestion any serious consideration.

Istanbul has had several names over the centuries.

CITIES WITH A CRISIS OF IDENTITY

Around there world there have been many towns and cities that have changed their name:

● The Russian city of Saint Petersburg (Sankt Petersburg) was changed to Petrograd in 1914 because it sounded too German. The communists renamed it Leningrad in 1924 after the death of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. In 1991 citizens voted to change the name back to St Petersburg.

● Istanbul was originally known as Byzantium, but was renamed Augusta Antonina in the 3rd century, after Antoninus the son of the Roman emperor Septimus Severus. In the 5th century it came to be known as Constantinople after the emperor Constantine the Great. In the 15th century it became known as Istanbul, thought to be an Arabic corruption of Constantinople.

Originally published as When changing times and attitudes mean a town’s name is no longer good enough