Will Queensland be renamed now the Queen is dead, or is it just that just ‘crazy Greens’ talk?

Some Australians have suggested Queensland should be known as ‘Kingsland’ in the wake of Elizabeth II’s death – even though it was known by that name long before she was born. 

Social media has erupted with jokes, and sometimes genuine confusion, about whether the state may have to be renamed in the wake of Her Majesty’s passing on Friday morning AEST. 

On the Reddit social media site there is a whole discussion under the title ‘Shouldn’t Queensland now have its named changed to Kingsland?’ – amid a series of changes since the Queen’s death.

Those include senior barristers now becoming known as ‘King’s Counsel’ rather than ‘Queens Counsel’, and the Queen’s Birthday public holiday becoming the King’s Birthday.

But while Queensland isn’t going to suddenly adopt a new name – the state is named after Queen Victoria who reigned over the United Kingdom from 1837 to 1901 – there has been a genuine push among some fringe Australian politicians for the names of both Queensland and Victoria to be changed, for separate reasons. 

Could Queensland be about to be renamed Kingsland?

King Charles is pictured when he was still Prince Charles (right),  with Camilla (the then Duchess of Cornwall) on Broadbeach on April 5, 2018 in Gold Coast, Queensland. There are now calls in some quarters to change the name of the state to Kingsland

Now-Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe called for the names of Queensland and Victoria to be changed to Indigenous names in 2020, when she was a little known state MP.  

‘Everything’s named as a result of invasion of this country, why wouldn’t we negotiate (name changes),’ Ms Thorpe said at the time. 

‘Anything that’s named after someone who’s caused harm or murdered people, then I think we should take their name down,’ she told The Herald Sun. 

Niigaan Sinclair, a Native studies professor at the University of Manitoba told CBC: ‘Queen Victoria presided during some of the most brutal and expansive years of colonial history — when land was stolen the most.’

The debate over whether or not to change the name of Queensland has some echoes with the Uluru/Ayers Rock situation.

It was called Uluru in the Pitjantjatjara language a long time before Europeans arrived in Australia. 

In 1873, the explorer William Gosse became the first non-Aboriginal person to see it and named it Ayers Rock after Sir Henry Ayers, South Australia’s then chief secretary.

In 1993, it was officially renamed Ayers Rock/Uluru, and in 2002 this was reversed to Uluru/Ayers Rock.

Though the name change was opposed at the time, there are now very few people who refer to it as Ayers Rock. 

Australia Greens Senator for Victoria, Lidia Thorpe (pictured) has called for Queensland’s name to be changed

The Republic of Ireland, which gained independence from the UK on December 6, 1922 – originally as the Irish Free State – has a mixed history of royal name changes.

Though the name King’s County in the midlands of Ireland has long since been changed to Offaly, some legal documents still refer to it by its old name to this day.

The next door county, Laois, is still called Queen’s County when the title deeds to land are updated when sold.  

Greens senator Lidia Thorpe thinks Victoria should be renamed over its association with Queen Victoria (pictured) and that Queensland’s name should be changed too

In the capital city, Dublin, its main train station, Heuston, was still called Kingsbridge until 1966.

It was renamed after Sean Heuston, who had been executed 50 years earlier for his part in the 1916 attempt to overthrow British rule. 

But Dublin still has a medical university called the Royal College of Surgeons, a law college called King’s Inns and a showground venue called the Royal Dublin Society.

America too, has state names called after British royals. The southern state of Georgia was named after King George II, while Virginia was named to honour Queen Elizabeth I, who was known as the ‘Virgin queen’. 

The US seems happy enough to maintain its royal state names, so maybe Queensland will too.