While many don't think twice about placenames, these do play a critical role in defining identity and relationships of people to the land and waters; not only for our first nations people but also for our colonial heritage.

This is a brief look at the main names that have been used to describe the Murray and their origins.

First nations

The Murray stretches for 2,500 km and passes through multiple first nation lands, from the Ngarigo nation at the source, down to the Ngarrindjeri nation at the sea. Therefore it is not surprising that there are many first nation names for the Murray. We will likely never know the full array of names of the River Murray as the details of many of these languages have become extinct as European settlement broke up the Indigenous societies along the river. While some languages have been partially retained, for many languages, there are remnants based on early academic studies and the written accounts of settlers and officials.

The Murray seems to have had four major traditional names conserved through colonisation, although one should note that there are a lot of minor variations on these names that could represent false cognates, similarly written / sounding words with different meanings.

Indi

Source down to Albury and is still commonly used to name the Murray section above the Swampy Plain River.

Dhungala

Used by the Yorta Yorta people that extend from about roughly Albury / Wodonga down to around Gunbower Island.

Millewa/Mille/Mirri

The most geographically dispersed collection of similar names for the Murray that includes tribes from Albury down to Wentworth and potentially into South Australia.

Murundi

Used by the Ngarrindjeri nation of the Murraylands and Cooyong.

Indi

The upper Murray on Yaitmathang (Jaithmathang) country is known as the Indi River. It is still commonly used today to describe the river above Swampy Plain River, but the first nations people used Indi to describe the entire length of the Murray upstream of Albury.

The Wiradjuri people use Yindi instead of Indi.

There seems to be two main opinions about the origins of the word. One suggests that the river was named after a water plant; the other suggests it means you. An online search showed that the word indi or ingi was recorded in an Anthropological Society of Australasia survey from the upper Murray (c. 1899-1903), used to describe a water plant which is fairly strong evidence for the original meaning of the word.

I couldn't find any direct evidence to suggest that "you" is behind the origin of the naming of the river. The Yaitmathang language is a dialect of Ngarigu, but I could not locate a word list for either. This is part of a larger language group that extends along the eastern coast up past Sydney where I found the closest form of the word you to indi which was nyindi. However, nyindigang was used by adjacent Tharawal people found directly to the east of the Ngarigu. This makes me think that this section of the river was named after a local word for a plant.

Now the question remains, which plant is the upper Murray named after?

Note that I found a single reference that during a ceremony for the official naming of Indi Springs, Tony Kelly, the NSW Minister for Lands at the time, stated that the Aboriginal origins of indi meant ‘something far away, or belonging to the past'. This seems like an unusual name to place on a living river that makes me doubt that this carries any legitimacy.

Dhungala

This is used widely online to describe the Murray from Albury to below Swan Hill across Yorta Yorta down to Wamba Wamba country. However, from a limited search, it appears that the Barapa people prefer using Mile or Mirri, likely limiting the historical usage of the name to the Yorta Yorta. It is believed to translate into great water.

Variations include: Dhungala, Dunghala, Tongala, Dungala, Dunggula, Dhungulla, Fingola

Milawa/Mille/Mirri

Millewa was one of the other earliest recorded Aboriginal words for the Murray, likely coming from the clans near Albury, the Wiradjuri or Way wurru people. Variations of these can be found along the majority of the middle section of the Murray all the way down to Wentworth and potentially into South Australia.

The standard meaning up and down the river appears to be mighty river, a rather apt name for the Murray. The literal translation for millewa was recorded as big one water in Smyth (1878).

Variations recorded along the river including:

Wiradjuri

Milawa, downstream of Albury

Barapa Bapara

Mile, Mirri, Millie

Wemba Wemba

Mile

Wadi Wadi

Miilu, Milu, Milloo, Millooie

Weki Weki

Mille

Latje Latje

MiUoo, Millieu (mob near Kulkyne)

Some Wiradjuri say Milawa Bila rather than just Milawa, where bila means river.

The -wa suffix appears to be limited to the upper sections where it may simply mean water. The Yorta people use wala for water. Looking south, the Wadawurrung and Bpangerang people use wa/wah for water.

The Wemba Wemba also used dietjenbaluk or deitchenballuk to describe the Murray, the translation meaning always shifting. Another apt name for the way the river wanders across the Riverina.

I found a reference to the use of lutte that may have been used by the Wadi Wadi near Swan Hill. Meaning unknown.

Since Indi and Millewa/Milawa were likely the first two originally discovered Aboriginal names for the Murray, one does wonder if this explains the apparently widespread use, or misuse, of the variant Millewa to describe the Murray River more broadly, including references all the way to the ocean near Lake Alexandrina.

Murundi

The final commonly used word is from the collective of Ngarrindjeri nations. While it is widely used in South Australia, I couldn't find any good sources behind the meaning of the word. One YouTube video suggested it meant "flowing water", however, I couldn't find anything to back this up.

Variations include: Moorunde, Moo-rundee, Moorundie, Murrundi

While the Ngarrindjeri nations comprise 18 different language groups, I couldn't find any references to Millewa being used, other than a lot of online references that appear to incorrectly suggest it was used here.

Notes

According to Smyth (1878), "every marked feature in the river has a distinctive name", which complicates the etymology. For example, Panamilli, Tangula (alt: Tongala), and Tiregola were recorded as being locations or bends in the river, yet are occasionally used to incorrectly name the river itself.

This can be complicated even further when tribes living away from the river have their own names for the Murray. One example of this is the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. Their word for the Murray was Ngalta, dissimilar to the Ngarrindjeri word murrundi. With 10 nations bordering the nations that live on the river, there are likely a significant number of additional names and variations used.

The Victorian town of Milawa is an interesting example of spurious etymologies and the difficulties in sourcing the meaning behind current-day placenames. There appear to be three possible etymological sources for the town's name, with at least two of these being incorrect:

1. The Oxley shire secretary, George Brown, reportedly suggested it be named 'millewa' after the Murray River (Victorian Places).
2. Freddie Dowling (No More the River Rings with Koorie Laughter, 2009) claims the name stems from the Bpangerang names for eyes (mila) and water (wah/wa). The 50 Words Project gave ma for eyes and wala for water, and a GANEAA word list suggested milla for eyes but Wah for a large water body such as a lake.
3. The last referrence to a local Waveroo Aboriginal word thought to mean 'flat land' (Aussie Towns).

Colonisation

The Hume

The first European explorer to see the Murray was Hamilton Hume on 16th November 1824. Captain Hovell gave the river the name Hume's River, in honour of their party member Hamilton Hume "being the first white that saw it".

The river would have likely still carried his name had it not been for the decision of Hume and Hovell to cross the flooded waters and to head southwest towards Port Phillip instead of following the river west.

Many believe it was Hume that named the river after his father, Andrew Hamilton Hume, the Commissary-General for New South Wales. However, the log books of Hovel make it clear that this wasn't the case (Boyes 1982).

The Murray

The final naming came about on 14th January 1830, when the whaling boat paddled by Captain Charles Sturt and his party emerged from the Murrumbidgee, discovering a "broad and noble river". He named it the Murray, after Sir George Murray, the Secretary of the Colonies in the British Ministry.

In a twist of fate, Sturt had asked Hume to accompany him on this exploration, and Hume would have almost certainly realised that this was, in fact, the Hume's River that he and Hovell had discovered just five years earlier. While the new name for the Murray was quickly adopted by the colonies in the lower reaches, the Hume River survived in name along the upper Murray up until the inauguration of Albury in 1859.

Afterword

It feels a bit ironic that Australia's greatest river is named after a person that never even stepped onto Australian soil, let alone saw the river. At least Hume was born in Australia and had contributed significantly to the country by showing the potential for the interior for development and farming. It would be interesting to know if the Surveyor General at the time, Sir Thomas Mitchell, knew of both names and if there was any reason why he didn't rectify the error.

Time will tell if the Murray will have have one or more of its original Indigenous name forms restored, as with Uluru and K'gari. Maybe one day we'll see the Indi flowing to the confluence with the Mitta Mitta, the Dhungala to the Warring (Goulburn), the Millie to the Barka (Darling), and the Murundi to the Yarluwar (ocean).

References

The Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia [RASA] Survey (ca. 1900). New South Wales Place Names, MLMSS 7603, Box 4, folder 5, page 8 (#381), NSW State Library, Australia. Retrieved from https://transcripts.sl.nsw.gov.au/page/box-4-folder-5-new-south-wales-place-names-1899-1903-page-8

Blake, B., Hercus, L., Morey, S. (2011) The Mathi group of languages. Pacific Linguistics, ACT, Australia. Retrieved from https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/17910

Boyes, R. (1982). The Murray River and its names.

Clark, I. (2009). Dhudhuroa and Yaithmathang languages and social groups in north-east Victoria – a reconstruction. Aboriginal History, 33: 201–229

Hemming, S. (2019) Ngarrindjeri Nation Yarluwar-Ruwe Plan: Caring for Ngarrindjeri Country and Culture Kungun Ngarrindjeri Yunnan (Listen to Ngarrindjeri People Talking), in Mosley, L., Ye, Q., Shepherd, S., Hemming, S., Fitzpatrick, R. (2019) Natural History of the Coorong, Lower Lakes, and Murray Mouth Region (Yarluwar-Ruwe), pp. 3 - 20 (17). Retrieved from https://www.adelaide.edu.au/press/titles/natural-history-cllmm

McConachie, F., Jenny, B., Reinke, K., Arrowsmith, C. (2019). Barapa Country through Barapa eyes: cultural mapping of Gunbower Island, Australia. Journal of Maps, 16(1) 13-20. Retrieved from http://doi.org/10.1080/17445647.2019.1701574

Steele, J.M. (2005) The Aboriginal language of Sydney: a partial reconstruction of the Indigenous language of Sydney based on the notebooks of William Dawes of 1790-91, informed by other records of the Sydney and surrounding languages to c.1905 Thesis, Macquarie University, Sydney. Retrieved from https://www.williamdawes.org/docs/steele_thesis.pdf

Smyth, R. (1878) The aborigines of Victoria : with notes relating to the habits of the natives of other parts of Australia and Tasmania John Ferres, Melbourne. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/b24885228_0002/page/n7/mode/2up