Moving to Māori
Poverty Bay, Hamilton and Levin have considered adding Maori place names. Is change inevitable, asks Philip Matthews.
A place by any other name
Poverty Bay has had a bad rap ever since Captain James Cook sailed away in October 1769, noting sulkily in his journal that he gave it that name ‘‘because it afforded us no one thing we wanted’’.
Two and a half centuries later, Poverty Bay is on the verge of getting a second name, a more felicitous one. The New Zealand Geographic Board is consulting on altering the name from Poverty Bay to Turanganuia-Kiwa/Poverty Bay.
Sometimes these exercises in dual naming take place with little or no fanfare. At other times, the opposite happens. And this seems to be one of those times.
When local newspaper the Gisborne Herald ran an online poll in February, it found that 72 per cent of the nearly 600 who voted were opposed to adding the Ma¯ ori name. ‘‘Why try to change the little bit of history we have got?’’ was one response. Others thought the new name is too confusing and too long. Some were under the mistaken impression that the city of Gisborne itself is being renamed, which it is not.
Eloise Wallace has been watching all this with interest. As the director of Gisborne’s Taira¯ whiti Museum, her submission noted that ‘‘there was similar consternation from similar parts of the community’’ 18 years ago when her institution changed its name from the Gisborne Museum and Art Gallery. They argued that no one will know where it is. But nearly two decades later, ‘‘the majority of people visiting the museum, locals and tourists alike, will use the name Tairawhiti and are learning its meaning and to pronounce it correctly,’’ Wallace says.
‘‘Using Maori place names as a starting point for storytelling has enriched our ability to share the Maori histories of the region. We also use Turanganui-a-Kiwa throughout the galleries and we know that the history and stories associated with this name creates a source of pride for young people in their home.’’
The Maori name translates as the great standing place of Kiwa, who came from Hawaiki on the Takitimu canoe, according to tradition.
Wallace says she wrote in her submission in favour of dual naming that, from her perspective as a Pakeha woman, names matter: ‘‘Place naming in Aotearoa was in my view a tool of colonisation. Pakeha using their power to wipe Maori names from a map has done a lot of harm to all of us and we need to repair the damage.
‘‘I also acknowledged that for Maori these names and histories have never been forgotten and have always been used, regardless of ‘official’ status. I also wrote that when we’re talking with our children who come through the museum, Poverty Bay is not a positive way to be talking about our community. For me, it is an anachronism as well. There are the problematic origins of the name.’’
Names do change over time. Few people outside Gisborne would know that the city was known by Pakeha and Maori alike as Turanga until 1870, when it was renamed in honour of Colonial Secretary William Gisborne, who had no local connection.
A good example of how quickly a new name can be accepted occurred on the other side of the North Island, or TeIka-a-Maui, as it has also been officially known since 2013. Mt Egmont was given a second name, Mt Taranaki, in 1986 and it seems that the original Maori name, meaning ‘‘shining peak’’, rapidly overtook the English name bestowed by Cook in honour of the First Lord of the Admiralty who backed his expedition.
‘‘Within less than a generation – gosh, who uses Egmont anymore?’’ Wallace says.
‘‘For me, the dual name [for Poverty Bay] doesn’t go far enough. I’d like to see a replacement, but like Taranaki/ Egmont, we might start using the Maori name and over time the primary name in use will shift toward the Maori one.’’
Politeness and vitriol Local institutions can have a part to play in increasing the acceptance of Ma¯ ori names, as Lance Girling-Butcher of New Plymouth could tell you.
He was editor of Taranaki newspaper the Daily News in the early 2000s. When it came to the fraught issue of ‘‘Egmont or Taranaki?’’ he was between the devil and the deep blue sea.
The newspaper style, when he took over the editor’s chair, was to call the mountain Egmont. A poll of readers had found significant support for that tradition, but things were changing.
‘‘We were constantly being asked by Ma¯ ori, in the most polite way, if we could change the name but we were also aggressively attacked by redneck Pa¯ keha¯ who said if we changed the mountain’s name, they were going to cancel the paper and do all sorts of diabolical things. But I was quite inspired by the politeness with which some of these older Ma¯ ori rang up and explained how important it was to them that the name became Taranaki.’’
One event made his mind up for him. In 2004, a small aircraft crashed into the crater of Mt Taranaki, killing both men onboard. The story went international and Girling-Butcher noticed, as he followed the story’s progress, that overseas media were calling the mountain Taranaki, not Egmont.
Rather than make a fuss with an explanatory editorial to readers, he simply issued a note to the paper’s sub-editors saying that from now on, the mountain would be called Taranaki, unless it was called Egmont in a quote, when it would be left as it was: ‘‘It might give people a clue to the personality of the person they’re writing about.’’
The Ma¯ ori name for New Plymouth is Nga¯ motu, but as far as Girling-Butcher knows, no one is campaigning for a name change. He does, however, use it