There is a popular myth that the word kangaroo comes from a Guugu Yimithirr (an Aboriginal language) word meaning “I don’t understand” because the Aborigines allegedly didn’t know what the Europeans were saying when they asked the name of the marsupial. However, this is widely regarded as incorrect; they did understand and responded with gangurru, their word for the Macropus robustus subspecies, which the English mistakenly interpreted to refer to all kangaroos. Most other languages in Guugu Yimithirr’s family also had that term, and it probably comes from a similar-sounding root in Proto-Pama-Nyungan, although no reconstruction work has been done on it. An interesting thing that happened is that the Paakantyi language, which didn’t have gangurru in its vocabulary, borrowed kangaroo from English as baagandji, meaning “horse”.
