Sun gave readers the sense that the newspaper would bring the latest news as the sun rises.
Morning Star and Star suggested that delivery would happen even before the sun rose.
Sun-Herald or in Victoria, the amalgamated Herald Sun, are names that emphasised news arriving with every new day.
Post, Mail, Express and Telegraph, four popular newspaper titles, conveyed a sense of daily news delivered by technology.
Coo-ee: Lying witness
Our own Ensign belongs to another group of newspaper names based on synonyms for flags.
These include Standard and Banner and are named to denote the stand that a newspaper intends to take. Nailing one’s flag to the mast is another way of putting it.
The reverse can be seen in Independent as a newspaper title. It implies that, come what may, a newspaper is going to maintain its independence.
Times and die Zeitung, its German equivalent, are named for the times in which we find ourselves. Times of London and Toorak Times were examples.
Coo-ee: Recruitment for the Boar War
The Age, as a newspaper name, is a variation on this, as are the names of the various Mirror newspapers. The Age reports news of the age: The Mirror reflects news of the age.
Then there are newspapers that made their affiliations clear. Worker, Guardian, Patriot, and Miner are examples.
Yet other newspaper titles were aspirational.
The names of the Melbourne Truth and its Russian equivalent, Pravda, are titles that suggested their readers could rely on the newspaper’s content as truth. Reality was a little different.
Coo-ee: A family tragedy
The largest group of newspaper titles are the most sedate - Gazette, Register, Advertiser, News, Bulletin, Chronicle and Press.
These titles implied that they merely reported things or contained advertising. Or was it because their founding proprietors perhaps lacked imagination?
Review, Monitor and Examiner suggest news analysis rather than news itself.
Classical names appeared regularly as newspaper names. Mercury was one.
Coo-ee: Historical pandemics
Mercury was messenger and herald of the gods, hence its use as a newspaper name. Popular also is a variant – Herald.
Argus was another newspaper name chosen to suggest the unsleeping Greek titan with a thousand eyes who saw everything.
Titans were the race who came into existence before the Graeco-Roman gods. Melbourne Argus had a unique distinction in Australia.
Its reports of proceedings could be quoted in court in the same way as law reports. Apparently this was not a critical feature to readers. They deserted it and it closed in 1957.
Coo-ee: The Queen visits Benalla
Tribune was another newspaper title derived from the classics.
Tribunes of the plebs were elected by the Roman people to protect them from the power of the consuls and the Senate, the most powerful members of the Roman State.
A few newspaper titles offer identification with a particular area – the Territorian, the Queenslander and the Westralian.
These parochial titles are mostly from areas famous for their parochialism.
- John Barry, Coo-ee
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