What’s In A Name?

You may not know it, but ’Strine has had a large impact on Australian pop culture.

The Never-Never: Although Never Never Land was introduced to a global audience by J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and has since become associated with a dreamworld of child-like innocence, the term was originally coined to describe the remote regions of the Australian Outback. To this day, parts of Queensland and the Northern Territory are known by the moniker, and Aussie claims to the Never-Never have been immortalized in song and literature.

Tasmanian Devil: You may know it as a mischevious Looney Tunes character hidden in an omnipresent tornado of dust, but the real Devil is known less for its drooling destructive tendencies, instead earning its name through disturbing grunt-like bellows, rumored ill temper, dark color, strong odor emitted when under stress, and ferocious appearance. Interestingly, the carnivorous Devils are actually part of the marsupial family, along with the kangaroo and the koala.

Van Diemen’s Land: Although popularly recalled in English and Irish folk songs—including a famous ballad written and recorded by U2’s the Edge—this was the name that Abel Tasman bestowed upon Tasmania in 1642 to honor Anthony Van Diemen, the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies.