Scottish Place Names
- Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia

For comparability with other cities around the world, Newcastle has been defined as the City of Newcastle together with the neighbouring City of Lake Macquarie to the south, the urban and semi-urban parts of the City of Maitland to the northwest and those suburbs in the Port Stephens Local Government Area to the northeast that are near the Newcastle airport. This area extends from Rutherford, Morpeth, Raymond Terrace and Williamtown in the north to Wyee and Catherine Hill Bay in the south but excludes the detached Cessnock area to the west. Of the names of the 180 suburbs and neighbourhoods located to date in the Newcastle-Lake Macquarie-Maitland-Raymond Terrace area, 54 (30.0%) are based wholly or in part on place names that can be found in Scotland, on Scottish family names or on Scottish words. Of course, many of the names are used in other parts of the British Isles as well but at least 28 (15.6%) of these appear to have a direct or indirect connection with Scotland.

Picture of Newcastle NSW via Wikipedia.

Official suburbs and other localities with names that occur only in Scotland and not elsewhere in the British Isles, and/or are definitely or most probably of Scottish origin are:


Some of the following suburbs and neighbourhoods are also likely to have a direct or indirect Scottish connection, but these names are associated with other parts of the British Isles as well.

A final category of suburban names comprises places that can be found in Scotland but which, in Newcastle's case, definitely or most probably have no connection with Scotland.

The names of two further suburbs - Bonnells Bay and Croudace Bay - may prove, on further investigation, to have a Scottish link but substantiating evidence has not yet been found. Some sources suggest that the family name Bonnell originated in Scotland but that it is now more strongly associated with north east England. Croudace is said to be a family name from Dumfries, one of the many variants of Carruthers. Black (1996), the authority on Scottish family names, makes no mention of either of these names, however. Originally called Scarborough by Governor Macquarie, after the Yorkshire seaside resort, Bonnells Bay was known as Morisset East until 1948 when it was renamed for the bay on which it is situated. The bay, in turn, was named for the pioneer Bonnell family (Newcastle City Council Library, citing Lake Macquarie Past and Present). Croudace Bay was named after Thomas Croudace, manager of the Scottish Australian Mining Company who owned land in the area (Newcastle City Council Library, citing Lake Macquarie Herald, 26 November, 1970). Thomas Croudace built a home in the area called 'Leighinmohr'. Since there is a Leighinmohr House and Hotel in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, Croudace Bay probably has an Irish rather than a Scottish connection, though a distant link with Scotland cannot be ruled out.

Many Scottish place names can also be found in those parts of the Hunter Valley to the north and west of the built-up metropolitan area. Examples include Aberdeen, Abernethy, Buchanan, Cessnock, Iona, Lochinvar, Melville, Paterson and Scone. These towns and suburbs have not been included in the present article since they are essentially rural or semi-rural communities beyond the main Newcastle-Lake Macquarie-Maitland conurbation.

Acknowledgments:

© Ian Kendall
Melbourne, Australia, March 2008
Revised December 2009

If you wish to contact Ian about his research, his e-mail address is ian.kendall1@bigpond.com.



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