Push for more Maori street names

Tauranga Maori are trying to convince developers to use more Maori names when building new city streets.
Iwi are assembling the meanings of all Maori place names in one easily accessible document to ensure understanding is not lost and to give them more relevance to those who decide on street and area names.
Hemi Rolleston is leading the drive to try and roll back the trend in which developers give subdivisions and streets names that made them easier to sell - such as Emerald Shores, Palm Beach and Olympus Grove.
Mr Rolleston said the effort would be directed into areas that had yet to be named. Changing existing names took too much time, effort and controversy.
He added that to succeed, Maori names would have to have meaning. "A name is just a name without the story. It is a matter of safeguarding the information before it is lost."
"Here in Tauranga Moana we have a history and a culture ... culture has become stronger through names," he told a meeting of the city council and tangata whenua.
If names had life and meaning, there was a better chance to influence decision makers and for developers to take heed of them, he said.
Once completed, the explanation of place names will become a reference document for the council which is the final arbiter of suburb and street names.
Mr Rolleston said Maori had not had a fair go at council's street naming policies.
Committee chairman Huikakahu Kawe said place names had been introduced into Tauranga that had no relevance to the area. "There are new names on the landscape with very little obvious indication that another race lived here."
Cr Murray Guy said there had to be a balance with the city's European heritage.
Cr Mary Dillon welcomed the move to give Maori names a cultural context. "It is these things that make us different from any other place in the world."
Ngaronoa Reweti-Ngata said Maori place names gave an area mana, status and power, and Maori felt esteem and respect.
Papamoa's Bluehaven property development manager Jason Macdonald said names were all about marketing and packaging. While developers would want to retain this flexibility, he saw room for compromise on the greater use of Maori names.
He believed that stage one of opening up Papamoa East down to the Kaituna River should be called Modena Beach but with the opportunity for some Maori street names.
Mr Macdonald saw merit in Maori names being chosen for areas of public parks and reserves.
The process had been for developers to put forward a list of names and for the council to make the final choice.