 It is one of six squares designed by the founder of Adelaide, Colonel William Light, who was Surveyor-General at the time, in his 1837 plan of the City of Adelaide which spanned the River Torrens Valley, comprising the city centre (South Adelaide) and North Adelaide.The square was named in 1837 by the Street Naming Committee after William Wolryche-Whitmore, a British politician who introduced the "South Australia Act 1834" to the British House of Commons, and in 2003 assigned a second name in the language of the original inhabitants, Kaurna, Ivaritji (later corrected to Iparrityi), as part of the dual naming initiative by the Adelaide City Council.Iparrityi (c.1847-1929), also known as Amelia Taylor, was the last full-blood Kaurna person and speaker of the language.