You've written it hundreds of times on paperwork, parcels and petitions, but do you know the story behind your suburb's name?

Some stem from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island languages.

Others were named after defining landmarks or historical events that happened there.

You asked us to take a closer look at how a few of the city's suburbs got their names.

This story is part of Curious Brisbane, our series where you ask us the questions, you vote for your favourite, and we investigate.

Gully of leeches

Indooroopilly, west of the CBD, translates to gully of leeches, which makes us wonder how it attracted anyone to the area.

State Library Queensland's (SLQ) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island language coordinator Desmond Crump said the name comes from a Yugara word, nyindur, meaning leeches and, pilli, meaning gully.

"Maybe in a past time near the Brisbane River there's probably been a gully full of leeches," he said.

A Sunday Mail article from 1929 suggested the area's train station was going to be called Witton, borrowed from a well-known "picnic resort" nearby called Witton flats.

Indooroopilly comes from an Aboriginal word meaning gully of leeches. ( Pixabay )

However, other documents show the district area was officially named Indooroopilly in the late 1840s, well before the arrival of the train line.

Mr Crump said around this time surveyors and place name gazetteers were instructed to keep traditional names for places if they were pronounceable and sounded melodic.

"If it was a little bit difficult or ambiguous then the suggestion was they'd use an English name or an anglicised version," he said.

Many Aboriginal place names remain to this day and the pilly pattern repeated itself in other areas around Brisbane and Ipswich.

"Yeerongpilly means place of the sand, being on the banks of the Brisbane River again," Mr Crump said.

"Jeebropilly out at Ipswich means place of the sugar glider and then there's Mutdapilly which means gully of mud, particularly black sticky mud."

Famous fig tree

Unsurprisingly, Fig Tree Pocket south-west of the CBD was named after a fig tree.

What you might not know is that it was so huge, it became one of the first things documented in the area.

A 1866 photograph of Brisbane's famous fig tree. ( Supplied: State Library Queensland )

The famous fig was so large that the first photographer to capture it on film in 1866 felt the need to put a person next to it to provide a sense of scale.

The black and white photograph shows a man, hat in hand, standing between two of the tree's gargantuan roots, spread out like tentacles writhing through the scrub.

Kenmore and District Historical Society president Judy Magub said the University of Queensland's botany department estimated it could have been 50 metres tall when the photo was taken.

Where did the name come from? Woolloongabba: (Yugara) - derived from woolloon-capemm which means whirling water. It refers to series of waterholes originally located there. Bulimba: (Yugara) - believed to mean place of magpie larks or peewees. Tingalpa: (Yugara) – means "place of stunning fish plant". Wynnum: (Yugara) – from "winnam" which means "breadfruit" or "Pandanus tree". Murarrie: (Yugara) – from "mudherri" which means "sticky, messy earth".

"The photographer said if you were to imagine the canopy as a roof then you could fit 400 people under it," she said.

"It really gives you an idea of how big it was."

The tree didn't survive into the 1900s, despite surveyors creating a reserve around it.

"It's believed it was mainly due to land clearing as the farmers moved in," Ms Magub said.

"The timber getters did a lot of the clearing as well."

This old survey map marks the spot where the giant fig tree was discovered. ( Supplied: Lands Department Museum )

You can still visit the reserve — it's now called Fig Tree Pocket Riverside Reserve.

A number of ABC Radio Brisbane listeners said they thought the famous fig tree was washed away in a great flood.

Ms Magub said it was easy to understand why this story exists.

"Someone else I've spoken to suggested it may have grown so big because of the constant flooding across the bottom of the pocket of Fig Tree Pocket," she said.

"It was in an ideal spot to grow very big but the demise of it was probably land clearing."

Battle of the birds

It wasn't just large trees and physical landmarks that gave Brisbane's suburbs their names.

A few shed a light on the local birdlife bountiful in the area during their settlement.

Toowong, just to the west of the CBD, is said to be named after the call of the eastern koel, a migratory bird that calls Australia home between September and April.

It's known for its shrill call — thought by some to mark the arrival of rain — and its parasitic survival tactics.

The koel lays its eggs in the nests of other species and tricks them into raising their young before returning to Papua New Guinea and other South-East Asian countries for winter.

Toowong was named after the call of the eastern koel. ( Flickr: Geoff Whalan )

The connection between the name Toowong and the call of the eastern koel was confirmed by SLQ, but the district's historical society claimed earlier records provide a conflicting theory.

Secretary Leigh Chamberlain said other documents connect the name to the white-throated nightjar.

"They are residential birds that would have been seen in Toowong all year around and they were active on nightfall," she said.

There's also uncertainty around whether Toowong should have been called a different name altogether.

"Aboriginals didn't refer to this area as Toowong, they called Toowong the banks of the river west of the Walter Taylor Bridge at Indooroopilly," Ms Chamberlain said.

"It was in those trees the koel used to nest."

She said the first people in the area referred to the area between High and Booth streets in modern day Toowong as Baneraba, after a large billabong that existed where a shopping complex development now sits.

A government surveyor's 1859 survey map shows the Toowong Creek was one of the earliest landmarks to take the name.

In 1862 a man named Richard Langler Drew called a subdivision of land on the banks of the creek The Village of Toowong.

The name was later applied to the local train station.

A spokesperson from the Yugara-Yugarapul Aboriginal Corporation said their records showed Toowong and the Mt Coot-tha area was called Gootcha (pronounced gudja) after the Yugara word for honey and two native bees.

Coorparoo is another suburb whose name was inspired by a bird call.

SLQ's Desmond Crump said it was derived from the Yugara word koolpuroom, which mimicked the sound made by a gentle dove.

Rest up in Inala

Inala wasn't the first or second pick when it came to finding a name for a small group of houses built south of Brisbane.

Prior to the 1950s, the area was considered part of Oxley.

Richlands, Inala and Suburbs History Group secretary Vicki Mynott said it took the name Serviceton in 1946 after a group of ex-servicemen established a housing cooperative to deal with the housing crisis soldiers encountered when they returned after World War II.

"There were only ever about 100 members and only seven of them actually managed to build houses there," she said.

In 1950 the unsuccessful cooperative sold its properties to Queensland Housing Commission, who had no desire for a name change.

Serviceton Avenue is a lasting reminder of Inala's old name. ( ABC Radio Brisbane: Hailey Renault )

However, the arrival of a post office in the area meant the suburb needed to find a new name that wasn't already in use.

A Serviceton Post Office already existed in Victoria and the Post Master General (PMG) was concerned people would get the two mixed up.

The name Jacaranda was suggested and quickly knocked back — an area near Dalby had already claimed it.

Inala was one of four Aboriginal words submitted by the Place Names Committee and was approved in 1951.

Ms Mynott said the word meant "resting time" or "night time".

"There was a housing crisis and most of the people who moved in in the early 50s were thrilled to do so," Ms Mynott said.

"They were living in terrible circumstances, doubling up with families and living in emergency housing camps.

"To get into an actual house was quite a good thing so I think most people would have thought it was a fitting name."

Inala was officially gazetted as a suburb in 1952.

Red cliffs of Redcliffe

It seems self-evident how Redcliffe, just to the north of Brisbane, got its name, but few know about the red, rocky cliff faces that inspired it.

History of Redcliffe president Errol Deller said Matthew Flinders named the area Red Cliff Point on July 17, 1799 during a voyage from Bribie Island to Norfolk.

He said the explorer anchored his ship off Woody Point before venturing onto land to explore the bold red sections of coastline visible from his ship.

"There are three stretches, they're not very long," he said.

"You can see the ones from Scarborough when you stand on the land because it curves around but it's like the white cliffs of Dover, it's best if you see them from the water."

These red, rocky cliffs inspired the name of Redcliffe. ( Flickr: Neil Saunders )

Mr Deller said original maps of the area suggested it was known as Red Cliff for many years before the 'e' crept in.

"The real estate industry burst in in 1862 and opened up a lot of the area for sugar cane farming," he said.

"They called it Redcliffe with an 'e' on the end of it."