SAY "WHAKAREWAREWA."

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 285, 2 December 1929, Page 6

SAY "WHAKAREWAREWA."

The Governor-General's protest against the mutilation of Maori place names by the lazy pakeha finds an echo in my soul. It is an offence to the ear of anyone who is a decently-educated New Zealander to hear the ignorant pronunciation and ugly abbreviation of quite simple native names. Even Pae-kakariki surely is better than "Pycoek." Sir Charles Fergusson was very properly annoyed by the popular Cockney contraction of Whakarewarewa to "Whaka." This abbreviation (usually "Wokker") is meaningless, since "Whaka" is only the Maori causative and must be used as part of a word or name. There is sense in "Whakarewa," but none in "Whaka." Really, if the "Whaka"-ites only knew it, they are lucky in not being required to pronounce the original name of the geyser valley in full. It is Te Whakarewarewatanga-o-te-ope-a-Wahiao. The meaning is: "The upspringing for a war dance of the column of Wahiao." The tradition accounting for this sweet little thing in place names takes us back to an episode of lae olden inter-tribal wars, when the chief Wahiao, an ancestor of the Tuhourangi tribe,' paraded a fighting force near Te Puia pa. He led them off in a "peruperu," a war dance, from the performance of which the tohunga of the party drew his omens as to the likely success or otherwise of the expedition. That, as departed wise men of Tuhourangi told me, was the whence and wherefore of the'namt s . On the -whole, therefore, Rotorua residents and trippists are being let off lightly in only having to say Whakarewarewa instead of the whole jeigbjteeg ~_~ ■'■ s<"<■*■'■ '■' WJ.C.