Why this street name is set to be wiped off the map after it offended an Uber driver
- Hottentot Crescent is soon to be called Moonlight Close
- READ MORE: Tourist hotspots to be called by their Indigenous names
The name of a quiet street is set to be changed after an Uber driver stumbled across it and alerted locals to its racist background.
Byron Shire Council last Thursday announced Hottentot Crescent in Mullumbimby, just west of Brunswick Heads, will soon be renamed 'Moonlight Close'.
The council determined that Hottentot, a racist term for Indigenous South Africans, was no longer appropriate for use and needed to change.
The slur comes from the Hottentot bean tree, a South African tree that grows on the crescent, but was used as a derogatory term by Dutch colonisers.
A quiet street in Mullumbimby, just west of Brunswick Heads, will have its name changed from Hottentot Crescent to Moonlight Close (pictured) due to the name's racist background
Jonny Simons, a local man who moved to Australia from South Africa in the 1980s, sparked calls for the name change last year after an Uber driver from South Africa tipped him off.
The street is home to 23 residences which are part of a housing estate developed in 1993, with surrounding streets also having botanically themed names.
An overwhelming majority of residents, 12 to 5, opposed the name change when asked for their opinions during the council's consultation phase.
One dissenting local, Daisy Sturm, said the change was 'for absolutely no reason' and added that it would be a hassle to update her address on legal documents.
'When I moved here 25 years ago, I was told that’s the name of a tree, and I thought "That’s beautiful",' she said, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
'All of a sudden, it’s unacceptable because, as I understand, one person who doesn’t even live here really objected.'
Other names for the street were also put forward for the council before they went ahead with Moonlight Close.
Other names shortlisted included Drunken Parrot Place, named after a nearby tree which 'every spring and summer it’s full of lorikeets getting drunk', Botanic Gardens of Sydney chief scientist Brett Summerell told the publication.
Jonny Simons (pictured) told the Byron Shire Council that Hottentot is a derogatory term to Indigenous South Africans
Mr Simons wrote to Byron Shire Council last year to call for the name change and teared up when fronting a council meeting in February.
He told councillors that having grown up in apartheid South Africa, he was 'vary aware of what that name means because it was a name my people were called'.
'It was shortened to hot-tots … to make you feel inferior.
'Only if you or your family were called those things can you fully understand what it means.'
The local also added that he doesn't hold anything against residents who stood against the name change because 'they didn't know what it meant'.
'They thought it was the name of a tree, but that tree was named as such because the Khoisan people of South Africa ate the fruit of that tree,' he said.
