The name Uraidla is derived from local Aboriginal origins. The neighbouring Kaurna people (from the Adelaide plains) and a local subgroup known as Peramangk, had a tale about an ancestral giant who fell in battle and whose body formed part of the Mount Lofty Ranges, with his ears forming Mount Lofty and Mount Bonython. The name Yurrēidla thus derives from the Kaurna words yurre (ear) and the suffix denoting location, -illa (Teichelmann & Schurmann 1840). This was later corrupted to Uraidla and adopted as the name of the town.