What's in a name anyway??

Post date: Apr 03, 2013 12:30:20 AM

Oh and it does seem there was consistency in the iwi responses. We will live in Te Ika o Maui (the fish of Maui) and Christchurch (or Otautahi) will be in Te Waipounamu (the waters of greenstone) and Raukura is the place closest to Antarctica

No blog last night but Tony did post an album on Google+. Adrian I don't see you on this - are you there but just not in my circle??

Anyway yesterday's news that was blog worthy. The New Zealand Geographic Board is the group responsible for official place names. They last made the news with the Wanganui/Whanganui debate. The group has been consulting with iwi to determine the most appropriate Maori names for the separate islands in NZ. As they were consulting they realised there are no names registered for the islands in any language. So in fact we don't live in the North Island and Christchurch isn't in the South Island and Oban is not the main town on Stewart Island as those island names do not formally exist. We could live in Kirby Island, Christchurch could be regarded as Boyd Island and Stewart Island could be nowhere at all. At this rate the Maori names will be registered before the English ones. That would really get under the skin of the red necks!!!