Brian Rudman: What's in a name? Depends on your ancestors or your politics

For two years from early 2003, the politicians of the well-heeled ward of Hobson fought themselves to a standstill over the renaming of a scrap of Parnell roadway hardly longer than a bus stop.

Then, totally exhausted and with no resolution in sight, they all had a lie down. A year-and-a-half hibernation to be exact. But now the spring sunlight has roused them, and it's fisticuffs at dawn again.

The extension of the Grafton Gully motorway to the port cut adrift three pieces of road, including a small dog-leg of The Strand next to Parnell Rise.

City officials proposed naming it Scandinavia Lane in honour of the Volvo dealership on it, but even the commercially minded Citizen and Ratepayer community board found that a bit tacky and proposed calling it after former Citrat councillor Harold Goodman.

The public were less enthusiastic, and Harold was backed in only three submissions - all from close family members.

Overwhelming favourite was Waipapa Place, proposed by Parnell historian Rendell McIntosh and supported in 425 submissions.

Waipapa was the Maori name of the stream and beachfront that once occupied the site, but the community board was unimpressed, and stuck with Harold Goodman Place. That was in November 2004.

Its recommendation went before a sub-committee of the Auckland City Council's transport committee in February last year.

On it were two newly elected anti-Citrat councillors, Action Hobson's Richard Simpson and Christine Caughey, and Citrat Hobson ward survivor Scott Milne. The vote was two-one to discard the Goodman name in favour of Henry Niccol Place. Mr Milne called the change "wacko".

Mr Simpson, an amateur historian, said Niccol set up a ship-building yard on the Volvo site in 1844 and was more deserving than the former councillor of being remembered on this site.

The Citrats denounced the decision as "petty politics" and "breaking an old widow's heart".

In May last year, the council's transport committee, chaired by Mr Simpson, called for public consultation on the Niccol name, necessary because it had not been brought up beforehand. As a gesture of conciliation, the committee offered to consider the Goodman name if some other nameless street suddenly appeared in Parnell.

No sooner had I written about this saga to that stage than descendants of Niccol upset the applecart by contacting me to say they backed the Goodman name.

Turns out Niccol's son, also called Henry, had deserted his wife - the daughter of Mayor Philip Philips - and his two children, one of whom was my informant's grandmother.

Henry Niccol, the son, was "a womaniser and a scoundrel" and the family didn't want the name memorialised in any way. Even as the label of a backwater street.

After that outburst, everything went quiet and the street lingered on in no-name limbo.

Then, out of the blue last month, Mr Simpson asked the Hobson community board to repeat its recommendation that the dog-leg be renamed Henry Niccol Place. But neither Mr Simpson nor councillor Christine Caughey turned up at the meeting to back his motion, and things soured when Citrat board member Julie Chambers, a Goodman backer, tabled my story of the family opposition to the Niccol name.

As a result, instead of endorsing the Niccol name, the board came up with two new options, Longboat Lane and Shipwright Lane.

Board chairman, David Simpson - councillor Simpson's brother - says his sibling did not attend the meeting because he was unavoidably delayed, and both see the new names as backstop alternatives only.

He says that when council officials return their report on the suitability of the new options, "I think we'll go with Henry Niccol. That's our favoured option at this stage."

He says that "just because someone with the same name does something disreputable doesn't mean you need to scrub all references to the name".

But Mrs Chambers is "very saddened" about the Simpsons' plan to revive the Niccol name.

"We agreed to a compromise where we acknowledge the historical shipbuilding past without offending anyone." By that, she's referring to Niccol's living relatives.

Goodman and Niccol already have streets named after them - in Penrose and Devonport respectively - so one might think Longboat or Shipwright are eminently sensible compromises.

But doing what's sensible has never featured highly in this battle.