Place Names ‘Must Not Be Corrupted’

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31441, 7 August 1967, Page 2

Place Names ‘Must Not Be Corrupted ’

If Mrs Alison Quinn, a visitor from Liverpool, lived in New Zealand she would be right behind any move to preserve the full pronunciation of Maori place names. As a historian she does not like to see names shortened or corrupted.

Corruption could eventually lead to place names becoming completely unlike the original To avoid this, the official, rather that the generallyaccepted, name should always be used, Mrs Quinn said in Christchurch yesterday.

Then, in the years to come, historians would not have to spend valuable time in research to trace the ethnic name of a place and its meaning. “I feel that Maori place names, however long, should be given their full pronunciation if only to keep the records straight,” she said. For an overseas visitor it could be very confusing if the name of a town, such as Paraparaumu. were spelt out fully on a road map and referred to by the N.Z.B.C. announcers and others as “Paraparam”, she agreed. Polynesian names have fascinated Mrs Quinn since she completed the index for the third volume of the voyages of Captain Cook, edited by Professor J. C. Beaglehole, of Wellington.

The two-part third volume of Cook’s journals covers Tonga and Hawaii and his attempt to find an entrance to the North-west Passage from the Pacific side of the world. The earlier volumes on New Zealand and the Antarctie were indexed by an Australian who was unable to do the third.

When the British Council asked her husband, Professor D. B. Quinn, to do a lecture tour of New Zealand Unlver-

slties, she decided to go with him. "I wanted to see the Pacific and New Zealand for myself,” she said. “I was familiar with what the names looked like, but I had no idea how to pronounce them or where to put the stress,” she said. “In all languages words look much more difficult than they sound. When you hear them spoken the words just ripple along."

Mrs Quinn hopes to hear the Maori language when she and Professor Quinn drive through the North Island on a tour before returning to Britain.

Indexing works her husband edited suited Mrs Quinn, a history graduate of the Edinburgh University.

"It meant I could do it at home when my children were there,” she said. “It kept my mind active, made me read books properly and provided a common interest with my husband. I have always typed and copied documents for him and done his proof-reading.”

Professor Quinn, professor of modern history at Liverpool University edits publications for the Hakluyt Society, named after Richard Hakluyt (1553-1616) the first English naval historian.

Mrs Quinn was awarded a gold medal by the Society of Indexers for her work on a volume of narratives of voyages compiled by Hakluyt in 1589. For this work her husband wrote the introduction.

Mrs Quinn said she had a constant feeling of “the familiar and the strange—a kind of dual experience” in New Zealand.

“I feel so much at home here that after two days in New Zealand I picked up the telephone receiver in our motel and almost answered by giving my home number. The strangeness is in the terrain, which is quite different from Britain, and in the gaily painted houses and roof-tops here in contrast to the dull greys and browns of the cities at home,” said Mrs Quinn.