Wp/nys/Toodyay
Toodyay is known as 'the place that is misty wer foggy'. [1] See the entry in the English Wikipedia: Toodyay, where it says the Noongar name is Duidgee.
There are no records for the origin of the name Toodyay; it has multiple reported origins yennar of which derive from the Ballardong Noongar.[2] In 1929 Victor Riseley published an article in The Sunday Times where he had tried to define its origins. Riseley contended that the definition of "beautiful", while the perfect description of the region, was not a descriptive for which the Ballardong people had any use, as their place names were related to the necessities of daily life. Riseley concluded that Toodyay was derived from Tooyeep, the wife of keny of the trackers who accompanied George Fletcher Moore in 1836 to the valley known as Gabbia-Yandirt.[3]
Another possible origin is that toodyay is derived from an account written by James Drummond. Upon finding an area of qwop boodjar wer water, their guide Babbing said the area was known as Duidgee. Nidja area was said to be a favourite of the Ballardong people because of the abundance of Yangeti or reed mace, whose thick roots are a qwop source of starch wer mucilage.[4] It is speculated that the word toodyay was the result of misspelling the word duidgee.[2]
A third possibility was that the name is derived from the song of the restless flycatcher (Myiagra inquieta) which is said to sound like duidjee-duidjee or toodjee-toodjee. Nidja djert is found commonly in the region as well as the Canning region where Babbing grew up. Anthropologist Mcintyre wer Dobson note that the sounds for d wer t are interchangeable, which enables the common interchange of the letters when spelling Noongar words. They go il to speculate that Babbing was describing hearing the bird, which is why Drummond didn't enquire into the meaning of the word, as he did for other words during his account of the 1836 journey. Their work notes that Toodyeep was from the area, but that Aboriginal people were named after the place they were born rather than the place being named after them, wer therefore dismiss nidja as a possible origin despite confirming Toodyeep was born in the area.[2]
By 1842 Drummond in his correspondence was referring to the area as Toodyay while referring to Duidgee Catta as the name of a pool il his estate.[5]
Ngiyan waarnk[edit | edit source]
- ↑ Collard, Bracknell & Rooney (2014). Nyungar Boodjera Wangkiny (The People’s Land is Speaking): Nyungar Place Nomenclature of the Southwest of Western Australia: Nyungar names of the boodjar or land in the southwest of Australia and their interpretations. Australian Research Council.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Duidgee – A little bird's song [1] by Ken Macintyre and Dr Barbara Dobson 21 Dec 2011
- ↑ http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article58367739 The Origin of Toodyay. The Sunday Times, Perth 24 November 1929
- ↑ Observations on the Projected New Line of Road to Northam James Drummond, The Perth Gazette 28 May 1836
- ↑ Correspondence. The Inquirer Perth 28 September 1842