OPINION: Welcome to Aotearoa New Zealand’s Worst Place Names Awards. The envelope, please.
In fifth place: Cape Maria van Diemen. C’mon. It’s one thing to name a New Zealand city after a middling English politician, but naming the westernmost point of the North Island after the wife of the Dutch guy who financed your trip, that’s low. Cape Maria van Diemen: a place fair begging for a new and better name.
Fourth place: Ninety Mile Beach. Yes, it’s a beautiful strand of sand stretching from Ahipara to Scott Point. Yes, it’s an abundant source of pipi and other delicious kai moana. But it ain’t 90 miles long. It’s only 55 (88km). Its original name was Te-Oneroa-a-Tōhē, which means “the long beach of Tōhē”.
Third place: Lower Hutt. Who was Lower Hutt named after? No one. It was named by and for one Sir William Hutt. He never came to the North Island. Or any of our islands. Under the banner of the New Zealand Company, he sold land he didn’t own to gullible Brits – and named the place after himself. Nailed it!
Second place: Auckland. Not until I watched Get the Name Right on ThreeNow did I discover who our biggest city was named for. Auckland got its moniker from a high-born English politician who was made the boss of India and who never once set a fancy-shod foot on our nation’s soil. Oh, and his name wasn’t Auckland. Our fair city was named for George Eden (Eden Park, Mt Eden, et al), whose title was Earl of Auckland.
What about Auckland’s Māori name, Tāmaki Makaurau? Tāmaki is the land between the Waitematā and Manukau harbours. Makaurau means lover or object of desire. Rau is 100 or plenty. So, Tāmaki Makaurau: the land desired by many. Or, and even sweeter, the land of a hundred lovers. Either one beats “Auckland” with its macron tied behind its back.
And the winner is: Christchurch, take a bow.
Now, if you’re about to say, “Dummy, it wasn’t named after Jesus Christ, a 1st-century Galilean Jew who became the central figure of Christianity, it was named after an English college”, I have to ask you, why should a Pacific nation’s second-biggest city be named after Christ Church, a snooty English college?
And how would you feel if it were named for another deity, say Mohammedmosque. Or Adonaisynagogue?
Are there more bad names? So many more. I live in Mt Albert. Previously called Ōwairaka, Mt Albert was named for Queen Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. His connection to Aotearoa New Zealand was zilch.
But Ōwairaka has a story worth telling. It was named for Wairaka, daughter of the captain and tohunga of the waka Mātaatua. But it wasn’t just her whakapapa that earned her a place name. Wairaka saved the waka from drifting out to sea.
She named what became the town of Whakatāne. And she actually lived in Ōwairaka. She fled there to escape an arranged marriage; then, she established a pā on our local maunga. Give the wāhine toa back her name.
More bad names? I shop at St Lukes mall, could rent an apartment on St Stephens Ave, dip my toes in the water at St Heliers, swim at St Cuthbert’s … We’re a secular city in a secular country. Can we please lose the saints?
But then what do we replace them with? The obvious answer is their original Māori name. In the case of Auckland, trading an English bureaucrat for land of a hundred lovers, well, that’s an easy one.
But we could also look abroad. And no place better to start than my favourite island, Newfoundland. Newfoundlanders are the undisputed champions of place naming. Consider, if you will: Heart’s Delight. Blow Me Down. Come By Chance. Cupids. Little Heart’s Ease. Dildo.
Any one of them is an improvement on Cape Maria van Diemen and Christchurch.
Jules Older’s long career includes roles as a clinical psychologist, videographer, medical educator and writer.
