-up facts for kids

Porongurup is an example of a Western Australian place with a name that includes the "-up" suffix.

Have you ever noticed how many places in south-western Western Australia end with " -up"? This special ending is called a suffix. It comes from a dialect of Noongar, which is an Indigenous Australian language. In Noongar, "-up" means "place of". Another similar ending, "-in" or "-ing", has the same meaning in a related Noongar dialect.

Indigenous Australians used these place names to create a "mental map" of their land. The names often described important features of the area. This helped them know where to find fresh water, food, and other useful materials. Because many of these places were near water, some people mistakenly thought that "-up" and "-in" meant "near water". Over time, the exact meanings and pronunciations of many of these names have been lost.

The Story Behind the Names

For a while, some of these places were spelled with "-upp" instead of "-up". This happened because the Western Australian Lands and Surveys Department used a special spelling system. This system tried to make Indigenous Australian names easier to pronounce for English speakers. However, it made the "u" sound longer than it should have been. To fix this, they decided to double the next letter, like "upp", to make the "u" sound shorter. But by 1915, they realized that in Australia, the "u" sound was almost always short anyway. So, they changed the spelling back to "-up" for towns in south-west Western Australia.

Sometimes, these terms were used for both Noongar groups and places. For example, Pinjarup is one name for a Noongar group. This name was later changed and used for the town of Pinjarra.

Places Ending in "-up"

Here is a list of places in Western Australia that end with the "-up" suffix. Many of these names tell us something special about the place.

See also

• Noongar for a map of the Noongar linguistic regions