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Tag Archives: names of compass directions

Northerly Names

31 Saturday Aug 2013

Posted by A.O. in Historical Records

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

name combinations, names of compass directions

capeyork_main

On Wednesday, we looked at the directions North and West as personal names, and I mentioned that there were many examples of both in Australian historical records. I thought it might be interesting to take a look at a selection of real life Australian names which contain either North or Northern in them.

North and Northern First Names

North Dorothy Alley (resided 1972 in Henty, Victoria)

North Victoria Allwinton (resided 1916 in North Perth)

Rev. North Ash (resided 1900 in North Sydney)

North Hildegard Bartholomew (resided 1937 in Sydney)

North Barter (born 1907 in Sydney)

North Veronica Best (resided 1972 in Corangamite, Victoria)

North Seabrook Bigg (born 1874 in Swan Hill, Victoria)

North Queensland Brady (resided 1925 in North Ipswich, Queensland; later moved to North Pine)

North Winifred Carter (born 1903 in Sydney)

North Chives (emigrated from the United Kingdom in 1932)

North Easton Cox (resided 1980 in Sydney)

North Adelaide Daly (born circa 1917 in South Australia)

North Overy Draggett (born circa 1872, died in Perth)

North Flood (born 1877 in Coonabarraban, New South Wales)

North Freeman Garnett (died in Western Australia)

North Gatehouse (died circa 1808)

North Minioa Graham (resided 1925 in Fremantle, Western Australia)

North Agnes Hayes (resided 1931 in East Melbourne)

North Catherine Howard (married 1925 in Queensland)

Mary Head North Kemp (emigrated 1951 from United Kingdom)

North Kite (died 1950 in Perth)

North Bethel Larry (resided 1977 in Somerset, Queensland)

North Matilda Lewis (resided 1930 in Sydney)

North Lone (died 1938 in Perth)

North Dalrymple Sutherland Macintosh (married 1890 in South Australia)

North Arm Ness (resided 1954 in Richdmond, New South Wales)

North Norman Richardson (resided 1949 in Melbourne)

North Pratt (died 1919 in Queensland)

North Australia Rose (born 1856)

North Sainty (married 1890 in Sydney)

North West Tennant (born circa 1829, died in Melbourne)

North O Toole (died 1926 in North Sydney)

Northern Monarch Charles Catterole (resided 1909 in Nhil, Victoria)

 

North and Northern as Middle Names

Agnes North Ambler (resided 1936 in Ballarat, Victoria)

Alice Cecilia North Newenham (died 1887 in Melbourne)

Arthur Ernest North Flower (born 1873 in Melbourne)

Constance North Booth (resided 1949 in Earlwood, New South Wales)

Daniel North Rice (married 1875 in Queensland)

Denis North Eastern Hogan (resided 1937 in Euroa, Victoria)

Dudley Francis North Fitzgerald (born 1891 in Melbourne)

Earl North Kourt Dempsey (born 1892 in Port Augusta, South Australia)

Edward North Stack (born 1871 in Sydney)

Eric North North (resided 1936 in Wilmot, Tasmania)

Ernest North Weston (died 1966 in Perth)

Ethel North Street (born 1881 in Melbourne)

Fanny North Bucknell (resided 1948 in Griffith, Queensland)

Florence North Bell (born 1870 in Muswellbrook, New South Wales)

Frederick Harold North Bowman (resided 1937 in Parkes, New South Wales)

Gertrude North Coffey (resided 1930 in Sydney)

Hini Moana North Wright (died 1982 in Ocea, Victoria)

Honora Assumpta North Clair (resided 1958 in Fitzroy, Queensland)

Juliann North East Bell (married 1891 in Victoria)

Lavinia North Noy (born 1880 in Melbourne)

Loreene North Goldfinch (born 1889 in Thebarton, South Australia)

Lovell North Thomas White (born 1900)

Mira North Sully (born 1910 in Queensland)

Morkalla North Croft (resided 1942 in Mildura, Victoria)

Nellie North Causby (born 1887 in Moonta, South Australia)

Pearlie North Louis Bissett (resided 1943 in East Sydney)

Richard North Whale (resided 1930 in Sydney)

Ruben Clarence North Fraser (born 1907 in Northcote, Victoria)

Tudor North Davies (resided 1963 in Hume, New South Wales)

Ulysses North Bagot (born circa 1820, died in North Adelaide)

Walter North Cocks (resided 1963 in Sydney)

William North Balnaguith Sorrel (born 1857 in Victoria)

Zaida Eva North Daley (resided 1949 in Melbourne)

Zillah North Goulding (born 1864 in Bulla, Victoria)

Benjamin Northern Monarch Burridge (resided 1958 in Brisbane)

Kilmont Northern Webb (resided 1968 in Darwin)

Margaret Northern Jones (born 1868 in Milang, South Australia)

Sarah Jane Northern Light Rann (married 1882 in North Adelaide)

(Photo is of Cape York, the most northerly point of mainland Australia)

Famous Name: North West

28 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by A.O. in Famous Names

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Ancient Germanic names, aristocratic surnames, celebrity baby names, english names, famous namesakes, historical records, locational names, middle names, name history, name meaning, names of compass directions, names of railway lines, nature names, surname names, unisex names, vocabulary names, Wikipedia

1

The Hills Shire is in the north-west region of Sydney. Big news in The Hills at the moment is the North West Rail Link, which will connect Rouse Hill to Epping, and involve the construction of eight new railway stations. To assist with the necessary disruptions, The Hills Shire council has put out a pamphlet: Is your business north-west rail ready? The pamphlet suggests you may want to stagger your work times, or work from home until the North West Rail Link is complete.

The North West Rail Link is the “baby” of the Hills Shire council, and as often happens, their baby name was “stolen” when Kanye West and Kim Kardashian called their daughter North West. However, in this case New South Wales has precedence, because they came up with the name North West in 1998. Why it takes 15 years between the proposal and sending out pamphlets is a question only local government can explain. (If you’re really curious, Wiki it). There is no date set for ending the project, which may not occur until 2020. Hope you’re north-west rail ready!

North is one of the four major compass points, and in Western culture, it is considered the primary direction, and the one from which all other directions are taken. By convention, north is placed at the top of globes and maps, although the word comes from an ancient Germanic root which means “down, under”. This may come from an ancient root meaning “left, below”, because north is to the left when you face the rising sun.

For people in the northern hemisphere, north is the direction towards the Arctic, and when they think of “northern lands”, they probably envisage ice and snow, or at least cooler temperatures. In many fantasy tales, dangerous or evil creatures come out of the north, such as Hans Anderson’s Snow Queen, and the dragon in Tolkien’s The Hobbit. However, the ancient Greeks believed that in the far north lay the country of the happy Hypoboreans, who lived in a land of eternal sunshine (kind of on the right track due to the Midnight Sun).

In the southern hemisphere, north is the direction of the Equator, and we may think of northern places as hot and dry, or steamy and tropical. In Australia, the northern part of the country Australia has a certain mystique as vast, hot, empty of people, and rich in natural resources.

North is also an English surname. The aristocratic North family hold the title of Earls of Guildford, and Frederick North, the second Earl, was Prime Minister of Great Britain during the American War of Independence. Frederic Dudley North, descended from the British Prime Minister, emigrated to Western Australia in the 19th century and undertook several important posts, including representing the state during Queen Victoria’s Jubilee.

The origin of the surname is unclear – it could refer to someone who lived to the north of a particular town, or possibly someone with Norse ancestry, or who looked as if they might have.

West is another major compass point, conventionally placed on the left side of maps, and lying in the direction of the setting sun. It seems to be from an ancient root which means “downward”, referring to sundown, and is closely related to the word evening.

Because the west points toward the sunset, in many cultures it represents death (to go west, means “to die”). The ancient Celts imagined the Otherworld could be found far out in the western sea, while the ancient Greeks believed the paradisaical Fortunate Isles were located in the western ocean. The island of Atlantis was also thought of as being to the west, far out in the Atlantic.

In Britain, the West End is the posh part of London, while Westminster is the seat of power, and the West Country the land of legends and fairy tales. Westward Ho!, by Charles Kingsley, is set in the West Country and deals with adventures in the West Indies. Its title is the same as a Jacobean satire by Dekker and Webster on west London, taken from the call of Thames watermen. The playwrights later wrote Northward Ho!, set in north London.

In the United States, the western frontier lands in the 19th century symbolised freedom, adventure, opportunity and progress, as in the famous phrase, Go west young man. The Old West is not so much a time and a place as part of the American psyche, and the American West helped inspire imaginative works as diverse as Little House on the Prairie, Star Wars, The Great Gatsby, On The Road, Breaking Bad, and The Wizard of Oz (which has a Wicked Witch of the West).

The iconic Wild West played a major role in the development of the Australian myth of The Bush, and there is much we can identify with, as we have our own frontier country, the Outback. Here the west is Western Australia, the largest state, and the most geologically ancient part of the country, at over 4 billion years old. The oldest life forms on Earth, the stromatolites, can be found in Shark Bay, and the world’s oldest fossil, 3.4 billion year old bacteria, was discovered in Port Hedland.

The West also refers to Western civilisation, an idea which goes back to the ancient Greeks. Today it has political connotations, with people believing that “the West” stands for any number of values they might like or dislike. It is political rather than geographic, because “western” countries are all over the world.

The English surname West denotes someone who lived to the west of a town, or someone who had moved to the area from the west. It turns up early on in Essex, the most easterly part of England. This is another aristocratic surname, for the Wests were an old family originally from Devon, in the West Country.

North and West have both been used as personal names since at least the 16th century, with West much more common overall. Most Norths and Wests have been male, although the first North I can find in the records was a girl, and there are many female examples of both names. A larger proportion of Wests have been female, compared to Norths. There are thousands of Norths and Wests of both sexes in Australian records, although most of these are middle names.

North and West are names which sound a little out of the ordinary, and yet are straightforward and instantly recognisable. Everyone can spell and pronounce them, and they’re easy to explain: “North, like the North Pole”, “West, like the Wild West”.

They seem modern, but have surprisingly long histories, and layers of meanings, of which you are free to choose the ones which appeal to you the most. Kanye and Kim reportedly chose North because they saw it as meaning “the furthest up”, and therefore the pinnacle of their relationship, which strikes me as very northern-centric, and making a second child’s name problematic. If the first child’s name marks the pinnacle of your relationship, what’s left for Number 2?

POLL RESULTS: North received an approval rating of 40%, and West a rating of 35%. Most people preferred the names North and West on a boy rather than a girl. 98% of people thought the name North West was more suitable for a railway than a human.

(Picture shows an artist’s impression of a station on the North West Rail Link)

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