Language Matters | Myth busting: where the word ‘kangaroo’ really came from – spoiler, it doesn’t mean ‘I don’t know’

Little did the European settlers know, but Australia’s indigenous peoples spoke more than 250 languages

The Kongouro from New Holland (1772) by George Stubbs, commissioned after Captain James Cook returned from Australia with the word and pelts from the antipodean animal. Picture: National Maritime Museum

Myth: Kangaroo was an answer meaning “I don’t know” when Australian Aboriginal people were asked by newly arriving Europeans about the animal. Here’s how it unfolded.

When Governor Arthur Phillip arrived with the First Fleet, in 1788, in what would become Sydney, he had with him an Aboriginal wordlist compiled by Joseph Banks, chief botanist on Captain James Cook’s first voyage, 18 years earlier, exploring Australia’s east coast.

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