There’s also Cameron Highlands

There’s also Cameron Highlands
Friday July 4, 2008

DR Lim Chin Lam has rightly made a distinction between the British usages of Maxwell Hill and Fraser’s Hill (June 13).

Just as Mount Swettenham took its name from a colonial administrator, so was Bukit Larut renamed after Sir William Maxwell when as Assistant Resident he built a government bungalow there. I’m not sure that Louis James Fraser actually owned his eponymous hill but he certainly mined it for tin.

I wonder what Dr Lim can make of Cameron Highlands, which takes its name from an obscure surveyor who first reported a “tableland” in that mountainous area.

Although William Cameron never actually reached the site, several parties were sent to look for Cameron’s “plateau”. As it never actually existed, earthfill from the road that was eventually cut and a valley was levelled named Tanah Rata – “Flat Land”.

So over time, the title of Cameron’s plateau was replaced with Cameron’s highlands to now become Cameron Highlands.

– Captain P.J. Rivers, Cameron Highlands

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Excerpt:
What the dickens is eponym?
By Dr Lim Chin Lam
Friday June 13, 2008

Why is it, in British colonial Malaya, we had (and still have) Maxwell Hill and Fraser’s Hill? Why the two styles of naming? I have this nagging feeling that Maxwell Hill was named after Maxwell whereas Fraser’s Hill must have been owned by Fraser!

“Oh, Why can’t the English, Why can’t the English” – recited to the patter song in My Fair Lady – “set a good example and make up their minds: Is it Fraser’s Hill or Fraser Hill?”