Names
Australian Placenames of German Background
Bundaberg, Queensland
The city of Bundaberg is located approximately 360km north of Brisbane. The name “Bundaberg” is thought to be an artificial combination of Indigenous (bunda) and German elements (berg/burg). The name was given to the town by John Charlton Thompson, the English surveyor who laid out Bundaberg in the 1860’s. bunda is the Kabi Aboriginal word denoting important man, and the suffix -berg has its origin many centuries ago in Old High German and means a mountain, hill or slope or a settlement located on a hill or slope.[1] Note the names of the well-known German cities Heidelberg and Nuremberg.
Welcome sign at the Bundaberg Regional Airport.
Photo source: John Robert McPherson, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
♦ Notes:
1. John Oxley Library (admin staff). (2013 July 16). Identifying main words of Bundaberg tribe Taribelang (Kalkie language) within the Great Sandy Strait language group. State Library of Queensland blog. / -berg. (11. Dezember 2022). Wiktionary, Das freie Wörterbuch. Accessed on 8 January 2023, at https://de.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=-berg&oldid=9372013 (in German)