G'day Azizi,

Many of our Indigenous Australians don't like the word "Aborigine" ... mostly because it is not their own word. They seem less worried about the adjective aboriginal ... but there is not a national agreement on a single preferred term. Locally (Sydney region, in east coast New South Wales) the preferred term is Koori ... meaning, like most preferred terms of indigenous people around the world, "person" or "man".

As there was a vast range of regional languages, there are several other names preferred in their own localities. I like to keep a map of the whole country, without any of our European-imposed states, boundaries and regions ... and simply marked with the preferred names for each region's indigenous people. (I believe the list I have worked from was the list of peoples heading the "Bark Scroll" presented to the Australian Parliament.)

It is, in one sense, a pity to lose the clear meaning - hidden (to most, being non-Latinists!) in the word Aborigine: "(here) from the beginning" - so appropriate for a people who have the longest continuous history in the world ... The people whose mastery of the land they roamed, perhaps 60,000 years ago, let them spend more time pondering their religious views than anybody else on Earth ... and whose land was seized by Europeans who claimed it as "Terra Nullius" - nobody's land!

However, Whatever name is eventually universal ... will have to came from the people themselves.

Regards,

Bob