[Editor: An article about the creation of the word “Anzac”. Published in The Casterton News and the Merino and Sandford Record, 1 July 1915.]
“Anzac” Cove
A new Australian word
“Anzac” looks like a foreign word; like one of the few short and easily pronounced foreign names we have come across among the many mouth-twisters and jaw-breakers we have been struggling during the last ten months to pronounce, as they came into prominence, one by one, as the names of scenes made noteworthy, through their baptism of blood during the progress of some fierce battle in the course of the war.
But “Anzac” is not a foreign name. It is a pure Australasian word, brand-new, just coined at the Dardanelles, and it has special interest for us all because it has been coined to commemorate the gallant manner in which the foreshore of the little Gallipoli bay, now named “Anzac” Cove, was taken by the Australians and New Zealanders during the current struggle for possession of this part of Turkey in Europe. It is a simple little word, and thank goodness, as many people will remark, it is easy to pronounce. It is coined out of the initial letters of the title “Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.”
But “Anzac Cove” is only one of the many places in Gallipoli that have been new-named by the Australians at the front, and we may reasonably expect that when the new map of Europe (that will be necessary after the war is over) comes to be issued, we shall find “Australia” writ large upon it in such names, that will record the gallant and prominent part our men are playing in working for the expulsion of the “unspeakable Turk” from European soil.
At an early stage in the progress of the war, the writer expressed conviction, that as Great Britain was the arbiter who fixed the map of Europe 100 years ago, after Waterloo, and again determined territorial boundaries of that continent after the Crimean war 60 odd years ago, so at the close of this war would she again have the final word as to what territory is allotted to each of the different peoples of the continent. Nothing which has since occurred has shaken that conviction, which is, on the contrary, to some small extent confirmed by the fact that our Australian soldiers are already paving the way for issue of a revised map bearing the impress of the British Empire, by informally and unofficially rechristening the prominent features in the topography of Gallipoli.
Source:
The Casterton News and the Merino and Sandford Record (Casterton, Vic.), 1 July 1915, p. 4
[Editor: The original text has been separated into paragraphs.]
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