Moreland City Council in Melbourne's north will be formally renamed Merri-bek from September 26, ending symbolic ties with a Jamaican slave plantation.
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The council will remove the name Moreland which was first adopted by Scottish settler Farquhar McCrae in 1839. Farquhar's paternal grandfather Alexander McCrae had been the 'Sugar Lord' of the Moreland Estate, Vere, Jamaica.
Just three per cent of Moreland's population, 6315 residents, voted in the name change poll.
The winning name 'Merri-bek' means 'rocky country' in the local Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung language.
Moreland resident, Gemma Grant, 21, welcomed the change.
"I like the new name, as long as the proper people have been consulted and it's a name that represents the community well, I think it's good," Ms Grant said.
"I think representing Indigenous voices is much better than perpetuating colonial ideals."
However, more than 2,000 people have signed a petition calling for the consultation processes to be reviewed, criticising a lack of transparency about the name change.
Urban historian and lead author on the Moreland place name report, James Lesh, said place names should reflect the values of the community.
"What names do is they tell us about our relationships as a community to place, I don't think that any name necessarily should be permanent, rather it needs to have the support of, and reflect the community and reflect it's values and ideas," he said.
Across Australia, several official place names have recently come under scrutiny for their racist connotations.
In May, the Tasmanian government came under fire for using a racist slur to identify an island off the state's far North West coast.
A campaign to change the name of City of Peel in Western Australia was rejected in 2017. The city's namesake Thomas Peel was a leader of the colonial militia that participated in Pinjarra massacre in 1834, one of the state's most violent battles.
The City of Stirling in WA is named after James Stirling, who also participated in the Pinjarra massacre. A campaign to change the name was rejected in 2021.
Successful renaming campaigns nationally include:
- The King Leopold Ranges, a mountain chain in the Kimberley region was officially renamed Wunaamin Miliwundi Ranges in 2020. Belgian King Leopold oversaw the violent colonization of the Congo.
- Mount Jim Crow in Queensland was renamed to Baga in 2018.
- In 2021, the Hepburn Shire Council in Victoria voted to change the name of Jim Crow Creek to Larni Barramal Yaluk, which means home of the emu in the Djaara language. Jim Crow laws enforced racial segregation in the United States.
- The Victorian government confirmed Lubra Creek in the Moyne Shire is also in the process of being renamed in 2022. Its current name comes from a derogatory term for Aboriginal women.
- Longreach Regional Council in Queensland is in the process of community consultation to change the name of Black Gin Creek to Watyakan Creek - Women's Creek. The original name had derogatory associations for First Nations Australians.
- Fraser Island in Queensland was renamed K'gari World Heritage Area in 2021, in recognition of the Butchulla people's dreamtime story.
Mr Lesh says names are just one element of a community's shared history.
"I don't think changing a name erases history, history is represented in a lot of different ways throughout our community and our environment and names are just a very prominent thing we do have a lot of control over and should be having conversations about," he said.
Over the weekend the Victorian government promised to rename Maroondah Hospital in honour of Queen Elizabeth II.
"Maroondah" is a Woiwurrung word that means "throwing leaves", a name that celebrates the natural environment.
More than 7,000 people have signed a change.org petition criticising the renaming.
The announcement has drawn strong criticism from First Nations leaders.
Victoria has committed to developing a treaty framework to enact the treaty and truth-telling elements of the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart.
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