The suburb was named in 1954 from the original name of
Lake Coogee, being
Lake Munster, which was named after Prince William, Earl of
Munster, and later
King William IV. The district had been known as
South Coogee since the 1870s and this earlier name remains in use by older settlers of the area. The district contains the site of
Thomas Peel's original settlement, the Clarence townsite, the first recorded land grants in the Cockburn area, and around Lake Coogee the remains of the cottages built by the
Pensioner Guards in the 1880s. The Munster district is unique in the continuous occupation of the Anderson, Newman, and Sawle properties by those families since the last century. In 1895 a postal directory mentioned that the suburb of Lake Munster was "also known as Coogee". In later years this name was applied more to the area north-west of the lake, while the rest of the area became known for postal purposes as
Woodman Point and
South Coogee in the 1950s. Munster was officially adopted as a suburb name in 1954. In 2019, the City of Cockburn approved a split of Munster, whereby the north-western part of the suburb became the new suburb of
Lake Coogee while another part, in the south-west, was added to the suburb of
Henderson. Only the eastern part of Munster remained part of the existing suburb. The changes came into effect on 30 March 2020. ==Geography==