Obtuse anglers: The linguistics and ethnography of fishing ground names on Norfolk Island (original) (raw)
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Naming the Aquapelago: Reconsidering Norfolk Island fishing ground names
2012
Fishing ground names are an understudied taxon in toponymy. By reviewing the author’s recent consideration of this toponym taxon, this article claims that an aesthetic appreciation of fishing ground names and their emplacement as linguistic and cultural ephemera is warranted within Island Studies and recent scholarship in aquapelagos.
Island Studies Journal, 2010
This paper analyses data on two aspects of unofficial place-naming or folk toponymy on the Dudley Peninsula, the eastern peninsula of Kangaroo Island, South Australia, namely (1) local unofficial toponyms, and (2) offshore fishing ground names. These place-name categories reflect naming patterns that embody specific local events, history and land use in the island's colourful past, and represent an important element of the collective memory of the area. It argues that a deeper analysis of various taxa of folk toponymy, especially in remote island locations with brief histories, can help toponymists and linguists understand broad principles involved in place-naming. Furthermore, it suggests island toponymy in Australia is an under-researched field, which deserves greater prominence in Australian place-name studies.
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Island Studies Journal, 2016
The social and linguistic status of Norfolk Island placenames is explored through a creative process based in fieldwork engagement. A personal narrative is proffered relating the human-human interface of investigative interaction with local fishers to their sociocultural environment. One of the means Norfolk Islanders make sense of their remote island is through names and other mediated social and ecological relationships.
Why is the North Sea West of Us?: Principles behind the Naming of Seas
2016
This article focuses on the motivations behind sea-naming, by means of examples from Europe but also elsewhere. Why do certain sea names become dominant while others retract into local forms or simply die out? The article takes us back in time to the early days of map-making and, indeed, earlier. Occurrences of sea names such as the North Sea are examined and analysed to see how they spread from an original one-language form to exist in multiple languages, and analyses them from a linguistic, geographic and nautical perspective. It is found that Seas or bodies of water in stretches of sea are named according to six main principles. Many sea-names are formally secondary names whose specific element is the name of: a) a nearby settlement name; b) a nearby island or c) a nearby country or region. In addition, a sea-name may be a formally primary name named from: d) a directional perspective, e) its appearance or f) containing the name of an explorer or a commemorated person as its specific
Toponymy and Seafaring: Indications and Implications of Navigation along the Åland Islands
In The Viking Age in Åland: Insights into Identity and Remnants of Culture. Ed. Joonas Ahola, Frog & Jenni Lucenius. Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae Humaniora 372. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica. Pp. 273–302., 2014
This paper reviews evidence of the very few place names in the Åland Islands that can be reasonably considered to antedate the post-Viking-Age colonization by Scandinavians. It argues that the few names that can be considered to have been in use already during the Viking Age appear associated with seafaring. These names may for the most part have potentially emerged in connection with the opening of the Eastern Route and increase of sailing via the islands across the Baltic Sea. The etymologies of these place names therefore do not necessarily reflect the toponymy used by inhabitants of the islands at that time. Within this context, the question of a Finnic etymology of Jomala is discussed along with an alternative to the Proto-Germanic etymology for the name Åland, which could instead date only to the Viking Age, derived from topographic features relevant to seafaring.