How Gabo got its name

The accepted version: Cape Howe, said another way

Captain Cook passed this corner of the coast on 20 April 1770. His journal records "a small Island lying close to a point on the Main" and says: "This point I have named Cape Howe". The cape honours Richard Howe, a Lord of the Admiralty who became Treasurer of the Navy that year. Cook saw the island but did not give it a name.

The heritage listing for the Gabo Island Lightstation puts it plainly:

The name "Gabo" is thought to be a corruption by the aborigines of the name "Cape Howe". If this is true then it must be one of the great ironies of Australian toponymy.

It is an old idea. In 1884 the surveyor J.F. Mann wrote that many place names were distorted in pronunciation, and gave Gabo Island as an Aboriginal attempt to say Cape Howe. Woolloomooloo, he said, came the same way from "windmill".

Surveyors were told to use Aboriginal names wherever they could. In New South Wales that sometimes meant an English name was heard, repeated back, and written down as if it were a local word. A NSW boundary surveying text lists "Gabo Island" as a mispronunciation of "Cape Howe Island", alongside Bodalla from "Boat Alley".

The Dictionary of Aboriginal Placenames of Victoria (Clark and Heydon, 2002) tags Gabo as coming from pidgin English. It quotes: "Gabo Island. Pidgin for Cape Howe, the original Aboriginal name was Werrenganno of unknown meaning". A study of placenames in NSW Pidgin notes that this is the one origin that has been proposed for the name.

The folk version you still hear

The other story goes like this. Someone asked the local people the name of the island and they answered "gabo", which is said to mean "island". A variation says "gabo" really meant "we do not understand" or "do not know". You will also find older references saying Cook himself recorded the name, which does not fit his journal.

No language source we have found supports either meaning. It is a good yarn, and the same kind of story is told about "kangaroo", but it is best treated as folklore.

So which is it?

The weight of the record points one way. Cook named the cape, the island took on a version of that English name, and the surveyors wrote down "Gabo" as if it were a local word. If so, the island's name is Cape Howe come back around.

One thing we could not confirm: some accounts say surveyor George Smythe gave the island its name while mapping East Gippsland. We have not found a source for that, so we have left it out of the story until we do.