In deep water: diving site names on Norfolk Island

Abstract

A linguistic and cultural analysis of diving site names and their role as toponyms is absent in Pacific research and studies into scuba diving tourism. This article analyzes a corpus of 38 diving site names collected during interview-based fieldwork on Norfolk Island. The analyses demonstrate that the naming of Norfolk Island diving sites can be perceived as a type of tourism management – through the names, diving sites are ascribed varying degrees of linguistic, cultural, and historical significance. Previous studies in tourism research have argued that tourism can be perceived as a modern form of pilgrimage, and that the naming of tourism sites is a way of sacralizing sites in order to emphasize their importance within processes of pilgrimage. The results of this article reveal empirically that Norfolk diving sites are part of a sacralization process, where transference of the cultural, historical, and environmental significance from names as language to locations as place occurs. The article puts forward diving site names not only as a toponymic taxon of interest to toponymy and linguistics but also for island and coastal studies in the Pacific and elsewhere.