There’s a wonderful story that all Australians are taught (well, I was and Mirinda’s version is very similar) that when the white man first came to Australia, he pointed at a kangaroo and asked a nearby Aborigine what it was. The Aborigine had no idea what the white man was talking about (given they spoke different languages is one problem) and said (in his language) “I don’t know.” The word for “I don’t know” sounds remarkably like ‘kangaroo’. This means that a kangaroo is actually an I don’t know. Cute but, sadly, completely wrong.
The real story is that James Cook was sitting around near the Endeavour River in Queensland, waiting for his boat to be fixed and he spotted a bunch of grey kangaroos. He asked a local what they were called and the local said “gangurru,” a Guugu Yimithirr word referring to grey kangaroos. It’s easy to see where our word came from.
The only trouble is that the fake story is far more interesting and it makes me doubt other stories. Like the one about Nome, Alaska. I was told that it is so named because when Alaska was being originally mapped, the cartographer took information from a captain’s hand drawn maps and thought “Name” was actually “Nome”. The captain didn’t know what it was called; the cartographer just misread it. I really hope that’s true.
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I meant to post this sign yesterday. It always makes me laugh. It’s outside a closed down building site alongside the Thames Path at Canary Wharf.
Not very random then.
Ha ha love the story but sounds like a bit of an uncle bob story to me 🙂
Never heard that one before or the one you said is real. but interesting anyway.
love mum
In the version I heard the main difference is that it was a woman aboriginal