This language was previously known as Wadjalang (D45). Prior to his 1990 publication Breen was skeptical of the status of Wadjalang as a language name, noting his reservations about names based on the verb wadja 'to go' and that present-day informants did not recognise the name. Breen (1971:13-14) concludes that the name should be retained in the absence of any other information and tentatively suggests that the word list supplied by Ahern in Curr (1886) may be Wadjalang (though he later changes his opinion (Breen 1990:69)).

Oates and Oates (1970), relating Breen's remark that informants do not recognise the name Wadjalang, claim that he suggests Marganj D42 may have been spoken in the territory allocated to Wadjalang. The source of this information, however, is not apparent.

Breen 1971 flags a possible link between Wadjalang and Bidjara (p. 14), and Breen 1990 notes that the territory occupied by speakers of the 'Blackall, Yangeeberra, Mt Enniskillen' (tentative) dialect falls, in part, within the area Tindale associates with Wadjalang (p. 69).

Breen (1990:68) uses Dharawala (rendering of Tarawalla in Breen's phonemic orthography) in preference to Tindale's Wadjalang as the language name on the basis of the phonotactic implausibility of Wadjalang. Breen takes his data from Powell's 'Tarawalla dialect' word list in Curr (1886) and unpublished Wadjalang wordlists collected by Tindale.

Dixon (2002) uses both Wadjalang and Dharawala. In the Thesaurus, Dharawala is used as the language name and Wadjalang as the people name.