Then I discovered that many of the place names I had learned at school were adjustments made to compensate for the English-speaking world's unwillingness to adapt.
I recall going through a city in Belgium that had three different names on the signposts to accommodate the Flemish, French and German influence of language.
My favourite was a port town called Flushing on some maps to aid the monolingual English speaker because it seems the correct name, Vlissingen, was considered too hard to pronounce.
Switzerland has three main languages and dozens of local accents. The natives appear to understand each other and do not seem to get into linguistic stoushes.
In Wales, signposts have place names in native Welsh and English. I do not understand the Welsh language and to my untutored eye it looks like bad typing and a puzzle to pronounce but, to the Welsh, it is their language and they take great pride in it.
The debate over the H in Whanganui reminded me of the debate in Taranaki when the mountain was to be given back its indigenous title.
The navigator Cook had named it after an obscure Duke and marked it on his map as Egmont. The furore from those who objected to returning to the Maori name was an eye opener.
The main argument was the objectors had grown up calling it Egmont. It did not seem to occur to them that there was a time before they were born and that the future was ahead.
After much grumbling, the mountain was officially gazetted as Egmont and Taranaki and, in a short space of time, the identity of the mountain became firmly fixed as Mt Taranaki. It remains a shy mountain, often hiding in the clouds and refusing to come out.
I grew up with a view of it from my bedroom window and, when I first went overseas, I missed the reassuring mountain on the horizon. It remains a comforting guardian over the province and a glorious sight on a lovely day.
Terry Sarten is a local writer, musician and social worker. Feedback email: tgs@inspire.net.nz
