Girramay facts for kids
The Girramay are an Australian Aboriginal tribe of northern Queensland.
Name
The Girramay ethnonym is formed from jir:a, meaning "man".
Language
The Girramay spoke the most southerly dialect of Dyirbal.
Country
The Girramay people's traditional lands extend over some 1,000 square miles (2,600 km2) south from Rockingham Bay to Cardwell. Northwards, their boundaries reach close to the upper Murray River and the Cardwell Range, and also take in inland areas of the Herbert River.
Society
Before European settlement, the Girramay lived in a mixture of rainforest and open forest environments.
Foods and artefacts
Girramay territory has trees with a variety of bark that could be beaten into a cloth to fashion a "rain shield" and neighbouring tribes such as the Dyirbal and Ngajanji therefore called this device a keramai, their pronunciation of the Girramay ethnonym.
- wila (cakes of brown walnut)
Alternative names
- Kiramai
- Giramai, Giramay, Giramaygan
- Kirrama, Kirrami, Kerrami
- Wombelbara (Warakamai exonym)
Some words
- gamu (water) cf. Dyirbal bana
- gumbul (woman) cf. Dyirbal jugumbil
- garba (ear) cf. Dyirbal manga
- wuyan, a verb meaning to "keep on taking bit by bit from a group, or from a pile of objects, until scarcely any remain"
- whoyerr (tame dog)
