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No Name

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Aileen Marwung Walsh

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OPINION

No Name

Aileen Marwung Walsh

$%675$&7Ȁ_Ȁ “No name” is used to articulate the many ways colonists overnamed or
renamed Aboriginal people. From the innocuous names of Tommy or Fanny to the
ridiculous, the colonist treated the identity of the natives through their names with
callousness or sheer disinterest.

.(< :25'6Ȁ_Ȁ colonial, overnaming, Aboriginal, Noongar, colonialsim

Soon as I opened the door all the chatter and laughter stopped. You
could hear a pin drop as all eyes were on me. All of a sudden some
poshed-up voice with a plum in her mouth came out of the crowd,
“Tracey dear, is this your little dark servant?”
I just stood there smiling. I thought it was wonderful that at least
people were taking notice of me. There were sniggers and jeers from
everywhere. I turned to the lady who did all the talking, and said, “My
name is Glenyse.” She was quite startled; she said, “Oh dear, I didn’t
think you had a name” (Ward 1988).

But Noongars did have names.

Before the invasion of the jangas, that’s the early Noongar name for the for-
eigner, Noongars were given beautiful poetic names that connected them
with the landscape, the animals, the trees, and the ocean.

ab-Original: Journal of Indigenous Studies and First Nations and First Peoples’ Cultures, 9ol. Ɇ, No. ɉ, Ɉɯɉɮ
&opyright ‹ Ɉɯɉɮ The 3ennsylvania 6tate 8niversity, 8niversity 3arN, 3A
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There were names.

What sort of names?

Yianna, it means the sound of the waves rushing back over the sand on the
shore.
Wungarit, that means “the clouds curling round and around.”
And Marnil means “see the emu feathers shaking in the wind” (Bates n.d.).

No name—or is it a native, is that a name?

Definitely a common name?

Is it the same as the return of the native? You know—Thomas Hardy style.
I don’t think so; there’s a return of native prisoners to Rottnest Island prison,
and then there’s the Department for Natives and Fisheries, so it can’t be the
same; they must be animals if they’re with the fish.¹

No name—or is it “Aborigine”?
Is that a name? What sort of name? Is it common or proper?

Oh, it is a proper name, Mary Aborigine married James Egan, and on the
record of marriage it says “Mary Aborigine,” and on the records for the birth
of her children it’s Mary Aborigine, so Aborigine must be a proper name, a
real name.²

No name—or is it boong? What sort of name is that? Does anyone know

what that means?

Is it just derogatory or does it have extra meaning? I heard once it meant

quan,³ so don’t know if its Noongar. Someone will have to research
that word.

No name—or is it “Indigenous,” is that a common noun or a proper name?

No name —oh it’s a half caste. Is that a name?

Yes it is, must be, on the marriage certificate it says “Lucy Half-caste”
married Charles Eades.
That’s on the marriage certificate, so that’s her name.⁴
“Half-caste” becomes a name, it means “half Aboriginal.”

74ȁab2riginal
They stood out you see the half whites, more attractive to marry if they’re
not all black.

No name—“quarter caste” and quadroon, are these names too?

What sort of names? The one drop rule, you know, you had to be pure to be
white.

No name—gin!
But gin becomes confused with the drink or becomes Ginny or Jenny.
Too much gin or too many gins (Dalton 1986).

No name—Friday, but Friday becomes Freddy. You know—Robinson

Caruso!

No name—oh there’s a buck, do you know what a buck is? It’s a male deer.
Is “buck” a name? Any blacks called “buck”? Oh yeah they call them “the
buck” and “the gins” in the commission reports.⁵ There’s the “Buckskins” in
South Australia.

No name—blacks.
Black becomes “Blacky” or ironically “Whitey.” ⁶

Any blacks called Blacky? Oh that’s right they became known as “Jacky,” a
slave name, or a “Jacky Jacky.” Any blacks still called Jacky?
Oh yes there are families of them in the north and one of the sons plays AFL.

Then there are the Jacky’s that worked for the Dempsters; there were two,
Jacky Gijup and another man simply know as Jacky and very few other
records to prove they lived through colonization. Certainly no birth certifi-
cates but there are some death certificates; Tommy Aborigine or Jinny from
being a gin.

The Dempsters used to go “nigger hunting” for their slaves. Go ask them,
it’s in their diaries. If their slaves did not comply, then they put them on the
islands off the south coast near Esperance.⁷

One other colonist got wind of it and queried it in a letter to the paper.⁸ Well
the Dempsters knew the letter referred to them. They were incensed, their
good name was being tarred with indecent behavior, but it is what they did,
they wrote about it;
but don’t let it be publicly known.⁹

2pinionȁ75
All the pastoralists had their Jacky-jackys. It originates in Africa you
know—the name Jacky for a slave. It comes from an African day name for
Wednesday.¹⁰

Can the name be lifted from its origins of slavery? No! The history of slavery
will always be contained in the name.

Sambo—do any of you know any Sambos? It’s a pretty big family name, but
of course you have to be black to have it. Any country associated with slav-
ery has Sambos. “Sambo” is also a name like “Jacky” that reveals the legacy
of slavery and so there are of course Sambos here in Western Australia. The
main Sambo family is in the gold fields, the first was a tracker.

But let’s change course, let’s talk about murder. Not murder by colonists but
murders by Noongars and how they were tracked down.

That’s when the real names were used, to track down Noongars to ask other
Noongars where the criminals were.

Too many Tommys and Jimmys and Jackys, so the police have to use the
Noongar names to sort them out. There are names like “Nauditchwart”
and “Nanmung.” The Noongar yorgas sometimes have their real names
recorded if they are murdered; but usually they were just gins or Fannys
and Annies.

So here’s a name—“Yombitch.” What’s he done? He’s been spearing and

murdering; murdering women.

A murderer in Noongar is doojar.

To like is kurderăk.

To like to murder is kurderăk doojar. Is that the Noongar word for a

psychopath?

There is also another Noongar word for this particular type of person, a
man that likes to murder but I can’t remember it. Most Noongars didn’t like
these murderers because they were bullies. They weren’t admired, they were
feared.

Yombitch and a few other Noongar men seem not to have felt any compunc-
tion in spearing and murdering; mostly women.

76ȁab2riginal
Yombitch’s first victims were Fannie Danup and Annie Nakeran in 1879.
Yombitch then assaulted the police. This was during ceremonies at York.
Yombitch scared both the whites and his fellow Noongars.
He was sentenced to one year for spearing Fannie and Annie.¹¹

He was sent to Rottnest Island Prison; he came back.

Then on the 16th of March, 1881, Yombitch murdered Wingimina. He

impaled her with a spear. Constable Hogan reported, “the spear entered
above the breast bone on the left side and pointed downwards, several
natives were present and saw it done. The father of Wingimmina was close
to her and when he saw his daughter fall dead, he picked up a spear and
speared Yombitch in the thigh.”¹²

Yombitch then got some spears and took to the bush.

Yombitch was tracked that day but the ground became too hard to follow
him. He was eventually caught and received a sentence of twenty years for
causing the death of Wingimina who was also named Selina, she was only
fifteen.

There were other men like Yombitch, there was Alick Birban or Beeraban.
He was from the Blackwood and his first recorded murder was in 1873; the
next was near Bunbury where he speared Mary Woolgup, then there was
another and another. His last victim was in 1906; her name was Julia. There’s
no death certificate for Julia’s death; she was forgotten. But he was remem-
bered by the Noongars of the south as “the silver bullet.”¹³ Julia’s children
may have been sent to the mission; they would never have known what hap-
pened to her, but the name “Julia” turns up on the certificates of baptisms at
New Norcia from around that time, but nobody knows who she was.¹⁴

Glenys, who wrote the piece this prose starts with, ended up in a mission.
She was a Spratt taken and put into the Wandering Mission before she was
sent out to work as an unpaid domestic, a slave. She’s probably descended
from Jack Spratt, you know; “Jack Spratt could eat no fat his wife could eat
no lean.” It’s not known how old that rhyme is, but it is common from the
eighteenth century. Nornet was also known as Jack Spratt; he was recorded
in 1862 because he killed a woman called Delyan. He’d also been part of the
murder of another yorgar¹⁵ three years earlier; she’d been in a relationship
with a man of the wrong skin group.
The Jack Spratt name came from around Jerramungup in the deep south of
Western Australia.

2pinionȁ77
Glenys never knew her parents, and her sisters actually turned up at the
same mission; but she didn’t know who they were.

How did Native Welfare know who these children were? Their births weren’t
recorded.

Through oral histories. The Native Welfare department interviewed people

and collected oral histories to work out who the children were and who
fathered them and had all the details on their files.

Here’s a name—Mary Wood, child of Gyce Wood.

No she’s not mine she’s the wrong color she can’t be mine.
Did his oral testimony stand with Native Welfare? You can read her story,
“Orphaned by the Colour of My Skin.”¹⁶

A child’s parentage determined by the color of her skin? And because she’s
fair, she’s not his, and she’s taken away.

Genetics play tricks on people who think the color of your skin determines
who you are.

Here’s another, another Wood—

“Why are all these boongs here?”
You’re one of them.
No I’m not, I’m white.
No you’re not, you’re a Noongar. You were in Sister Kate’s because you’re
Aboriginal.
He goes back home to his family and tells them. His wife leaves him, his
children disown him.
But then he gets some reparation money for being stolen and the kids
come back.

Aboriginal people have to rely on oral histories to learn their family histo-
ries since colonization. And some of them go wrong. It’s hard work wading
through the morass of names and comprehending all their meanings when
the whites were determined to breed out the color, shake off the culture,
overlay the Noongar names with white names, cutting off the past.

There are a few names of Aboriginal people officially recorded in births,

deaths, and marriages; for the most part Aboriginal people were known
generally, not specifically within a familial context. The general names were

78ȁab2riginal
like “Tommy” and “Jimmy,” “Bob” and “Billy.” Lord John Forrest had lots of
Tommys.

Poor white—that’s an aspiration for the blacks, but don’t let the poor whites
near the black camps, they interbreed and produce children that are the
worst of both.¹⁷ It’s why there are so many half castes, most of them living
with their Noongar dads; not the low white biological fathers who have to
be looked for using DNA testing.

Was it only poor whites that had children to Aboriginal mothers? What
about the Brockmans and the Dempsters? They weren’t poor whites. Noon-
gar families have their names.
Oh yes, it’s back to the slave question. Noongars and other Aboriginal
people would be given the names of the colonists who owned them. But
Australian colonists say there was no slavery because it was all done legally
under legislation and they weren’t called slaves. But the language of colonial
law can be slippery when hiding that which one does not wish to be known.

The discursive condition of the personal names of Aboriginal people dis-

closes a multilayered and multifaceted object of inquiry. A theory of “Proper
Aboriginal Names,” what’s that? What does that mean?¹⁸

AILEEN MARWUNG WALSH is currently the holder of an A5& /aureate 'octoral 6cholarship at
the Australian National 8niversity, where she is investigating recuperating humans in deep time.

N OT E S
1. From 1909 to 1920, the state of Western Australia had a Department of Aborigines and
Fisheries.
2. HAGAN JAMES Male ABORIGINE MARY Female ALBANY 757 1854
3. Quan is the Noongar word for “anus.”
4. EADES ALFRED CHARLES HALFCASTE LUCY TOOLBENUP 21336 1880
5. See Gale 1908.
6. See the discussion of Paul Carter on naming natives in Walsh 2005.
7. See Battye Library, MN 558, Records of the stations at Esperance and Fraser Range
taken up by the Dempster brothers, ACC 335A.
8. See Anonymous 1872.
9. See Dempster Brothers 1872.
10. See Walsh 2005.
11. See Green and Moon 1997.
12. See Terszak 2008.
13. See Tilbrook 1983.
14. See New Norcia baptismal records for Katie Dimer and John Star.
15. Noongar word for “woman.”

2pinionȁ79
 16. See Terszak 2008.
17. “Unlawfully on Native Camp” (May 29, 1942), Kalgoorlie Miner (WA: 1895–1950), 4,
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article94818954. “Liquor Raid at Native Camp,” (December 16,
1936). The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA: 1931–1954), 20, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article
74334228. “Native Camp” (October 31, 1954), Sunday Times (Perth, WA: 1902–1954), 8,
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article59697361. “Disturbance at Native Camp,” (July 1, 1950),
The West Australian (Perth, WA: 1879 –1954), 8, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article47872236.
“Police Found Five Men in Native Camp” (July 13, 1953), The West Australian (Perth,
WA: 1879–1954), 16, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article49220120. “Man in Native Camp”
(September 13, 1940). Northern Times (Carnarvon, WA: 1905–1952), 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.
news-article74940484.
18. A play on the title of Coates 2006.

W O R KS C I T E D
Anonymous. 1872. “Correspondence: Settlers on the South Coast Using Islands as Prisons.”
Editorial. Perth Gazette and West Australian Times (WA: 1864–1874). March 8.
Bates, Daisy M. No date. “Section III 2a Southern Western Australia. Book 1 Folio 8/1-75.”
Perth.
Coates, R. 2006. "Properhood." Language 82: 356–82. DOI 10.1353/lan.2006.0084.
Dalton, B. J. 1986. “The Nature of the 'Gin': A Note on 'Whirlwinds in the Plain.'” Aboriginal
History 10: 152–56.
Dempster Brothers. 1872. “The Natives on the South West Coast.” Editorial. Inquirer and
Commercial News (Perth, WA: 1855–1901). April 10.
Gale, C. F. 1908. Royal Commission to Inquire into the Treatment of Natives by the Canning
Exploration Party. Perth: Western Australian Government.
Green, N., and S. Moon. 1997. Far From Home: Aboriginal Prisoners of Rottnest Island
1838–1931. Vol. 10. Perth: University of Western Australia Press.
Terszak, M. 2008. Orphaned by the Colour of My Skin: A Stolen Generation Story. Verdant
House.
Tilbrook, L. 1983. Nyungar Tradition: Glimpses of Aborigines of South-Western Australia
1829–1914. Nedlands, W.A.: University of Western Australia Press.
Walsh, A. M. 2005. “The European Naming of Aboriginal People in Western Australia:
Names, Language and Colonial Ideology.” Honors thesis, Curtin University of
Technology.
Ward, G. 1988. Wandering Girl. New York: Henry Holt.

80ȁab2riginal

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