ON THE VERNACULAR NAME OF PETROGALE BURBIDGEI

WA Museum Records and Supplements | Updated 1 decade ago

Full Text: Kitchener and Sanson (1978), when describing Petrogale burbidgei (Marsupialia: Macropodidae), suggested the vernacular name warabi for it, based on a personal communication from I. Crawford that warabi is the name used by Wunumbal speaking people. Subsequently, warabi was adopted by the Australian Mammal Society in 1980 and is used in Strahan (1983).

During 1987 and 1988 we worked with Wunambal (-Wunumbal), Worora and Ungarinyin Aborigines in the north west Kimberley during the Department of Conservation and Land Management's rainforest surveys and during negotIations with local Aboriginals about the future management of the Prince Regent Nature Reserve. We obtained Wunambal names for a variety of mammals as well as other vertebrates and plants. When discussing Petrogale burbidgei we were consistently told that warabi was not the name of an animal. Warabi is, however, the name of a major mythological site on the coast of Montague Sound (Crawford 1968).

Aborigines in the north Kimberley use the same names for both P. burbidgei and P. concinna, although they clearly recognize that there are two different species where they occur together. The Wunambal names we were given are monJon and maluwal; these are synonyms. The other names we noted were manjanj (Worora) and wunjana (Ungannyin) (orthography of McGregor, 1988). We are confident that these are most, if not all. the Aboriginal names for this geographically restricted species.

Under the circumstances the use of warabi for Petrogale burbidgei is incorrect. We propose that monjon be adopted instead. Petrogale concinna has a well accepted vernacular name (Nabarlek) derived from Arnhem Land Aborigines and the use of monjon should not lead to any ambiguity.

We thank Tjapu (Geoffrey) Mangglarnarra of Kalumburu for his help with the Wunambal language.