POPULAR PERVERSIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 52, 2 March 1929, Page 8

POPULAR PERVERSIONS.

Every now and again some newspaper correspondent wants to know the correct spelling' And the. oHgin of some New Zealand plant-name or "ti-tree." for example —winch should it bet As was explained hist iiL 1 . * s is the popular name of the familiar manuka; "ti" is the cabbage-tree. Tea-tree is said to have been so named in the first place by settlers from Australia because th«i manuka resembled a shrub which in New bouth Wales and thereabouts was sometimes Used t | lc tea „ billy When the real article ran snort. Ti-tree Is of course quite incorrect if used to signify the manuka. But the inaccurate version persists, even officially sometimes. The worst perversion of facts and orthography is contained in the name of a railway station down in Otago Titfi," no less, this curiosity in nomenclature belongs to a place 13 miles from Uunedin on the line to Invercargill. t^° e , ot i ler l f® e dlld plant names are subject to bafbarous treatment. A Wellington paper the other day permitted one of its staff" in fk! Cr »!i t, r/¥ gi '' B*? win ß the tree-forks U aB if we ca,led sir -Mm Campbell s memorial mountain "MaUngagi«n." The ponga fern tree is commonly mis-spelled "mtiiea" Ahd popularly pronounced "bungef." And rauTs "rJddlEy?" rCd iD dViC ° ffiei^l bi » letter notices P ? r the mentioned some mutilated Maori names of steamers. The Ktifow «i«, thti Kartigi another. The rightful and 1 § 1 " al n * meß c all for record. Kurow should be Kohurau (a combination of the Words for mist ?L hundred, or many), a high hill on the South Canterbury -Otago border. Kartigi is really Katiki, a place on the beach near Moeraki. Both are railway station names, and probably it Is too rtitldh trouble to go setting them right at this time of day. Another curiosity in pakehaMaori map names is Colac Bay, awav down on the shore of Foveaux Strait. I pulled over Colac until I happened to visit that back-of-beyond plaee once, and from the old Whaler and sealer at the beach settlement found it was really Oraka. j