Australian Barramundi Farmers Association - Barramundi Industry Production Summary

Barramundi was a name that appears to have become well used in Australia by the later part of the 19th century. However, the origins are not entirely clear.

A number of Barramundi producers advise that anecdotally, the name is Aboriginal and means fish with big scales and that it also applied to the Saratoga.

However, the main sources on Aboriginal languages say only that the word is likely to have been Aboriginal.

The word seems to have had early currency in Central Queensland in the Fitzroy region as some of the early usages of the word relate to fish and events in that area. The early spelling varied including Burra Mundi and burramundi and Barramunda.

The English writer Anthony Trollope following his visit to Australia in 1873 wrote “There is a fish too at Rockhampton called the Burra Mundi – I hope I spell the name rightly- which is very commendable”.

The OED notes suggests that early application of the word applied to a range of large scaled fresh water fishes but it seems to have applied especially to the lung fish (Ceratodus forsteri) found in the Fitzroy River in Central Queensland.

This seems to be confirmed as the great Australian poet, Andrew Barton (Banjo) Patterson in his classic collection of childrens’ verse “The Animals Noah Forgot” published in 1933 and illustrated by Norman Lindsay, has a poem entitled the Lung Fish. This tells the humerous story of an aristocratic English jackaroo, the Honourable Ardleigh Wyse rider shipped to north Queensland who is told by a boundary rider that instead of using a dry fly for fishing, the boundary rider catches barramundi (lung fish) by knocking them over with a stick in the big dry.

The name appears to have rapidly spread from Central Queensland and appears to have continued to apply to a range of species across North Queensland. One early source notes that the name Barramundi was being “applied incorrectly to Lates Calcarifer”, the species now commonly known as the Barramundi.
Incorrect or not, Lates Calcarifer is the species is now commonly referred to as Barramundi in Australia. By 1938 the Sydney Bulletin described Barramundi as the “King of Australian Fishes”.

Other Aboriginal language groups use other words for the species now known across Australia as Barramundi. The Gooniyandi people of the Kimberly region of Western Australia use the name balga. The Wik people from the western side of Cape Your use the name Minh Wechan. The Murrinh-Patha people also from the Kimberly use the word Tharnu.

The name is clearly especially Australian and other names are used for the species when it is produced outside Australia. Whatever the origins of the name, Barramundi is uniquely Australian and uniquely delicious.

Barramundi the Name