[1][incomplete short citation] One classification of these varieties groups them with Ngarigo, as one of several southern tableland languages of New South Wales.
Sometimes the whole of the Burragorang language speaking area as far north as near Young is included as Ngunnawal, giving them a population in the 1830s of well over a thousand people.
[citation needed] According to settlers living in the area in the 1830s, such as quoted in the Queanbeyan Age, there were three groups in the region: the Ngunnawal, the Nyamudy/Namadgi and the Ngarigo.
[citation needed] The present dispute originated when the Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory at the time, Jon Stanhope, inaccurately stated that "Ngambri is the name of one of a number of family groups that make up the Ngunnawal nation."
"[4] He made the error after talking with multiracial people of part Ngunnawal descent, whose forebears had come from Yass in the 1920s to find work.
[6] This claim to be a distinct nation is disputed by many other local Aboriginal people who say that the Ngambri are a small family who took their name from the Sullivan's Creek area located to the east of Black Mountain in the late 1990s.