The issue of place names runs through the history of every colonized and postcolonial country, often involving the name of the country itself. As Edward Said points out, ‘If there is anything that radically distinguishes the imagination of anti-imperialism, it is the primacy of the geographical in it.’ Thus the territories which settlers named Rhodesia, to honour the military conquest by Cecil Rhodes, is renamed Zimbabwe when that nation becomes independent in 1980. Similarly, the name of its capital city is changed from Salisbury to Harare. In settler colonies and postcolonies such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand, place names such as Rylstone, Sydney, Victoria, London, Nova Scotia and Wellington indicate the concern to make the land familiar and to mark its ownership by the settlers. Yet these names will be found side by side with indigenous place names such as Mudgee, Wagga Wagga, Saskatchewan and Waikato indicating a continuing consciousness of the connection between the land and the peoples who inhabited it before the settlers.

This double claim also pertains to the flora and fauna of settler countries. The Britons who came to these lands often gave familiar names to birds, animals and plants which bore some resemblance to those they had known in England or Scotland. But Australian magpies, though black and white, belong to a different species than the English magpie, as Australian robins also differ from English ones.