What’s in a name?

from Darling Magazine | Autumn 2023 | Edition 9

An arty day on the peninsula

As one of the oldest parts of Sydney, our Balmain peninsula is steeped in history. The Balmain Association has an important task to document and preserve our fascinating past. In this article they explain the original names of the peninsula.

The Balmain Peninsula has three suburbs, Balmain, Birchgrove and Rozelle, all with colonial names. Balmain was named after first fleet surgeon William Balmain, and Birchgrove was named after Lieutenant Thomas Birch, both of whom were given land grants on the peninsula.

Rozelle was known by settlers as Balmain West until it was renamed in 1892 after Rozelle Bay. The bay’s name has two possible derivations. The most popular, but least likely, is that the bay was named after flocks of Rosellas living in the area.

The more likely explanation is that it was named after Rozelle House in Ayrshire, Scotland. Major George Johnson who owned Annandale estate bordering the bay came from Annandale, near Ayrshire and he heavily influenced the name choice. Hence the area was named Rozelle.

In recent times the Inner West Council have adopted the original names that were used by the Wangal, Gadigal and Birrabirrigal people of the Eora nation. Our ward of Balmain is Baludarri, meaning leather jacket.

William Dawes recorded some of the place names and the language of the area. In 1790 he sketched a map inside the cover of his book, Grammatical forms of the language of N.S. Wales, in the neighbourhood of Sydney. The sketch gives the coastal area of East Balmain the name Ku-Wang or Cowan which may mean ‘the other side’ or over there’. The spelling of these places varies depending on the colonist writing them down as there was no written form of the local Eora language. Whilst the names were recorded only in a few cases, their meanings are important to our history.

ANU’s book, Aboriginal Placenames, provides names for several of the islands surrounding the peninsula. Spectacle Island is Gong-ui, Snapper Island is Ar-ra-re-agon, and Cockatoo Island is Wa-rea-mah. It records that Iron Cove (also known as Long Cove) is Go-mo-ra and Long Nose Point is Yurulbin, the meeting of the waters. Yurulbin park now sits in Birchgrove alongside the harbour. Despite all this research we are still unsure what was the Gadigal people’s name for the peninsula. Learn more about local history in the Balmain Association’s Streets, Lanes and Places, available online or Roaring Stories.