Darwin, Australia

A friend had read about the new movie Australia which deals with the Japanese bombing of the city of Darwin in February 1942 (the attack involved a larger force than had bombed Pearl Harbor and killed 243 people), and wondered if the city was named after Charles Darwin.

A quick check of Wikipedia revealed that Darwin, a city of 120,000 on the northern coast of Australia, was indeed named for Charles Darwin, but, surprisingly, not when he was the world famous author of The Origin of Species which was published in 1859, but in 1839:

The original inhabitants of the greater Darwin area are the Larrakia people. On 9 September 1839, the HMS Beagle [sic] sailed into Darwin harbour during its surveying of the area. John Clements Wickham named the region “Port Darwin” in honour of a former shipmate, famed scientist Charles Darwin.

In fact, Darwin was somewhat famous in 1839. When he returned from the five-year voyage of the Beagle in 1836, at the age of 27, he was already a celebrity in scientific circles because of his journals and the specimens including fossils that he had sent back to England during the voyage.

My friend couldn’t get over the idea of naming a city for a man.

Friend:

If you live in Darwin, are you a Darwinian?

How ridiculous to name a place after a writer. Did they name places for Freud, or Marx?

Me:

What about naming a city after Nietzsche?

Friend:

If you lived there, would you be a Nietzschean?

- end of initial entry -

Kristor writes:

Your friend writes, “How ridiculous to name a place after a writer. Did they name places for Freud, or Marx?” I live in Berkeley. Then there’s St. Paul; there must be hundreds of places named for him. Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and Washington, St. Francis, St. Benedict, St. John. All writers.

Then there are men like Humboldt, Boone, Fremont, etc., who wrote some, but were famous mainly as explorers or scientists.

And let’s not forget Austerville, in South Africa …

LA replies:

You’re right of course. In reconstructing the conversation, I didn’t get that sentence right and made it sound silly. I don’t think my friend meant any writer, but that certain eminent names—Freud, Marx—would be risible as place names.

I didn’t know there was an Austerville in South Africa. There is an Austerfield in Northern England. Not named after a person, but after the Latin word for south or south wind.

Anna writes:

…and if you were a grumpy person living in Marx, would you be a Grouchy Marxian?

Edward D. writes:

The German city of Chemnitz in Saxony was known as Karl-Marx-Stadt, East Germany during the Cold War.

LA replies:

It must have been a real fun place to live in, especially for kids.

Christopher B. writes from Britain:

“HMS” in a ship’s name means “His/Her Majesty’s Ship.” Therefore one obviously cannot have the following:

The original inhabitants of the greater Darwin area are the Larrakia people. On 9 September 1839, the HMS Beagle sailed into Darwin harbour during its surveying of the area. John Clements Wickham named the region “Port Darwin” in honour of a former shipmate, famed scientist Charles Darwin.

If these were not your words, you should have perhaps put a “sic” after “the.” Actually, it really grates when Americans do this, although since the Royal Navy is not capable of taking care of a few Somali pirates there is no reason why anyone should know anything about it.

LA replies:

You’re absolutely right. I’ll add a “sic.” I recognized you were right the moment I read you, but it’s not something I would have picked out by myself. However, I’m not a mere member of hoi polloi either. And I’m always glad to hear from readers in the land of Magna Carta.

Ron L. writes:

Naming countries, administrative regions, cities and towns after people is quite common during colonization periods, conquests, and revolutions.

The countries of Bolivia (Simon Bolivar), Colombia (Christopher Colombus), and the Philippines (Philip II Hapsburg of Spain and Austria) are named after people.

The USSR was full of cities renamed after communist leaders, the most notable being Leningrad and Stalingrad.

The U.S. is full of states and cities named after people. Your friend is rather ignorant of history and geography. I hope your friend does not live in New York (James Stuart, Duke of York), Pennsylvania (William Penn), Maryland (Charles I’s wife), Virginia (Elizabeth I), Georgia (George I), Louisiana (Louis XIV of France), and Washington State. As for cities, I’m sure I could think of dozens in the U.S., but you can find a list here.

LA replies:

Ron, you’re quite right, and I already indicated that I may have misrepresented what my friend had said.

However, the examples you give undercut your own point. The place names you give are not simply a person’s name. They take the person’s name and turn it into an appropriate place name. The countries you mention are not called Bolivar, Philip, or Louis. The cities in the USSR you mention were not named Stalin and Lenin. You and I do not reside in the Duke of York. (Though of course York itself is a place in England.) Harrisburg is not the capital of Penn. There is no state called Mary. And Jimmy Carter does not come from George.

You thus make the very point you’re setting out to refute, which is that a person’s name generally does not work as a place name. Therefore it has to be altered to make it work.

There are of course exceptions. America has cities, counties, and even a state named Lincoln, Washington, or Jefferson. But notice that Lincoln itself was originally a place name, in England, and Washington with the “ton” ending already sounds like a place name. As for Jefferson, there are several counties called Jefferson County. But is there a city named simply Jefferson? And there are lots of places in the U.S. named after La Fayette. But most of them are Fayetteville. Baltimore is named after Lord Baltimore, but Baltimore just sounds like a place name.

The friend who started the discussion says:

I still can’t imagine living in a place called Darwin. That would be awful. Maybe Darwinville.

Paul T. writes:

Up here in Ontario, Canada, we have a town called Swastika. As Wikipedia notes: “During World War II, the provincial government sought to change the town’s name to Winston, in honour of Winston Churchill, but the town refused, insisting that the town had held the name long before the Nazis co-opted the symbol.” Still, I find it a little disconcerting when I’m having my morning coffee at Union Station in Toronto and a loudspeaker blares, “Train arriving from Swastika…. ”

Kidist Paulos Asrat writes from Canada:

I think what may have struck your friend about Darwin and later on Freud and Marx (and even Nietzsche) is that these names are now associated with whole ideologies or philosophies.

Imagine living in Freud, and being a “Freudian,” and those from Marx we’d be tempted to call “Marxists” (not Marxian), etc …

And of course, Darwin, and the whole issues around him.

I think it is quite funny.

David B. writes:

The county I live in here in Tennessee is Lawrence County. It is named for the War of 1812 naval hero, James Lawrence. Lawrence with his dying breath said, “Don’t give up the ship!” Despite the fact that the ship was captured, this became a rallying cry for American sailors.

Our county was named Lawrence in 1817, four years after his death. The county seat was named Lawrenceburg in 1819. A lot of counties and cities in Tennessee are named for national heroes.

LA replies:

I didn’t know where “Don’t give up the ship” came from. It’s exciting to have such an association with one’s name, especially since so many recent Lawrences have had less than honorable connotations: President Francis Lawrence of Rutgers University, who aggressively pursued affirmative action admissions policies and then found himself targeted by the black students his own policies had brought into the university, because, they said, he hadn’t gone far enough; the outrageous Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which declared unconstitutional all sodomy laws in the U.S.; Lavrenty Beria, Stalin’s murderous henchman…

And yes, there are various places named Lawrence. In New Jersey, there are quite a few roads named Lawrence Street, Lawrence Avenue, and so on. I don’t know why it’s so common. And there’s Lawrence, Kansas.

David B. writes:

Yes, the place names in the United States named Lawrence originate from James Lawrence, the naval hero. From that time, people named sons “Lawrence.” You could say that you are named after the man who said, “Don’t give up the ship!”

Gerald W. writes:

Wasn’t there someplace named after that Amerigo Vespucci guy?

LA replies:

LOL. Yes. Because the brilliant person who drew up that map realized that “Amerigo” or “America” sounded like the name of a place, and a good name at that.

Paul T. writes:

Other dubious Lawrences: D.H. Lawrence, the father of the counterculture’s sex/blood/death and sex-is-the-answer-to-everything obsessions; and the slippery servant of perfidious Albion, T.E. Lawrence.

Do you suppose that hairy bearded guys from the island of Lesbos answer to the name of Lesbians?

James G. writes:

You write,

But notice that … Washington with the “ton” ending already sounds like a place name…. Baltimore is named after Lord Baltimore, but Baltimore just sounds like a place name.

You have no idea how correct you are. Our first president’s ancestor took his surname from the manor of Wessington, or Washington, that he owned in Durham County. Baltimore is named for Cecilius Calvert, Baron of Baltimore, first proprietor of the Maryland colony. Cecilius’s father, George Calvert, had been elevated to the Irish peerage by James I, who named him baron of Baltimore, a tiny port on the southwest coast of Ireland. So both Washington and Baltimore were originally place names.

LA writes:

Here’s wikipedia’s article on James Lawrence (1781-1813). He was born and raised in New Jersey, which would explain the many streets named Lawrence in that state, which I’ve oftend wondered about. He had an extremely active naval career, being involved in many battles against Tripoli and the Barbary pirates in the 1800s. There are many Lawrence Counties and Lawrencevilles named after him.

James K. writes:

In your eagerness to criticize Darwin, I think you’ve boxed yourself into an inaccurate corner. I can think of many cities and towns named after people that (unlike Washington) don’t particularly sound like place names. In my native state of Massachusetts we have Winthrop, Adams (and North Adams), Hancock, Everett, Webster, and many others named after obscurer people. (Yes, there is even a Jefferson, despite his unpopularity in New England. Technically Jefferson is part of the town of Holden, but the other names I gave are all incorporated towns.) In other states and provinces this pattern is repeated. From east to west, Edison, New Jersey; Raleigh, North Carolina; Columbus, Ohio; Madison, Wisconsin; Jackson, Missisisippi; Bismarck, North Dakota; Dallas, Texas (and also Houston, although that does have the -ton ending); and Vancouver, British Columbia are well-known examples, but there are many small towns along the same lines. (I have not even mentioned the many cities and towns named after saints.) Shakespeare, Ontario, however, seems to be the only town I can think of named after someone whose greatest fame was as a writer.

November 22

LA replies to James K.

It’s true I’ve been anti Darwin for a long time, but I don’t think it’s quite fair to say that I’m anti Darwin, Australia. However, the fact that you would think that I am anti Darwin, Australia underscores the point with which this thread began: that it’s problematic to name a city after a person who is associated with a controversial theory or ideology.

Of course, as told above, when Darwin was named, its namesake was not yet associated with the most controversial theory of the nineteenth century. Which may explain how rare it is that a place is named for a controversial writer or thinker. In 1839 Darwin was well known enough for his former shipmates to name the Port of Darwin after him, but only 20 years later, on the publication of his theory of the origin of species, did he become world famous, with the result that the residents of Darwin, many of whom, we may assume (even in Australia!) were Christian believers, found themselves living in a town named for the most influential subverter of religious belief in the history of the world. If I were a Christian resident of Darwin, I might have found that rather bothersome.

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Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 18, 2008 09:40 PM | Send