Kimberley

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A city in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, historically significant for diamond mining ; a vast sparsely populated region in northwestern Australia known for remote wilderness and Aboriginal heritage
2. A South African city in the Northern Cape, famous as a center of diamond extraction ; an expansive area of northwestern Australia characterized by rugged terrain and indigenous cultural importance
3. A major city in South Africa's Northern Cape, renowned for its diamond-mining history ; a large remote region of northwestern Australia notable for its natural landscapes and Aboriginal populations

Etymology: Kimberley is a place name before it is anything else, and its roots run back to a seventh-century woman. The name comes from Old English elements meaning "royal" (cyne), "fortress" (burh) and "clearing" (lēah), so it means something like "the clearing of Kyneburga," after a female saint of that name. English place names built this way were common, and this one stayed attached to its landscape rather than to a person's life story. The name then travelled far from its English origins. It was given to places in other English-speaking countries, most famously the diamond-mining city in South Africa, whose name became attached to the kimberlite rock in which diamonds are found. The rock was named after the town, so a place name ended up lending its name to a geological term.