MAORI PLACE-NAMES

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 113, 15 May 1934, Page 4

MAORI PLACE-NAMES

tJXCOEEECTED EKRORS

"ESTABLISHED FORMS"?

(By Hare Hongi.)

It is good to know, through "The Post," that %, Geographic Board has been working upon necessary- corrections in our place-names, Maori and English. It is? not.-good to know that that board hasv decided to correct some of the Maori names, and to leavo others, equally solecistic, in their'present mutilated forms. "And not only mutilated, but positively meaningless; instance, Petoue, which, to tho Maori, has no njeaning whatever. (Pito-one; Sandend; tho iniior-end of. Wellington Ilai--;bpur, which'tis a sandy bea'ih.) And JwliereasoheAvould .think that-the mere fact of & iianie^bd.irig incorrectly fornib3. would call'for treatment by a cor-: roctLng board,; that board ■ iiaively excuses itself, frclm. doing sp;;.by .saying; that that mutilated form is already established! And so the longer and prior .-estabKsbinent. pi, tb,© true ;|,oMn> with its historical associations, is .absolutely ignored;' and thqg'e mutilate.^' and. unhistoric forms aio to be transmitted to posterity foi all time! "V' ?■'' And, whilst the board very properly restoies the necessary ''article/:t'6> (the), and parts it from the rest of the name, as in Te Puni, To Awaiti; in others, requiring the same treatment, such as Te llawhiti, it conjoins the article' and leavel-, the uiconuot lorin, Terawhiti. To Eaivhiti is, as a name, the correct foim; colloquially it would be used as To Ed "tt'lnti It hteially means "The sun cross; the apparent crossing ;of lthe sun fiow. tho east." For this, the true form, the board had in mind a vilo Teruwhiti form, -which would have 'been still iuUhcr inexcusable. One fears that it i\ ould bo useless to ask the. board: What acceptable meaning it has to offer for its Teiawhiti. «'THE PLACE OF LANDINGS." Then for the doscuptivo and historical naino of Paua-taha-nui (Pori-rua Intake), thus the board: , '■' Pahautanui, although not correct, is adopfjed." :In this, the board stultjfiea .itself.*-It knous tho coricct form, yet. it adopts npt only an. incorrect but a,"m,eaniiigless form, ior Pahautanui. has no meaning whatever in Maon. Then the incorrect and als<> meaningless Kai'warra (rr'doOs, not occur m the language) is,tq stand as the name for tho. railway but tho conect, spelling, r KaiTwhara--whara, is adopted as the nam»> of the hill above the station! There again the boaid fails in its duty, both as to the language and as to .posterity. Then Ngahauranga has become so well established that it is adorited'^n place of .the conect form, Kga TJranga. So says1 a aorrectuig boaid An^i again: "AVaripori is so -ft ell cstablislied: that it has been allowed to stand..'- But it should really be Whaiopouri,'.Rafter the celebrated Nga liriinga chief." We are told that Nga Uranga was/th'evname of the chief -\vhence the iiamoVof the place was derived. That is news, .indeed! But theio was no such chief aiii'd name. Like the mnjonly of Maori plaeernames, Nga Uranga is descnptivc. Nga is the, pluial aihcle, the; and-Uranga means landing, plurally, landings.) ), In earlier years, a paity canoeing.'fj-pm Pito-orie to Tiaki wai, Pjpi teas .a.iid.' Te Aro, would call in and land^at-Nga Uranga.. Theie they would imputt tKi'ir news,and'; share any Na Uranga nevf"s,X:, The party: would thca continue theirHrip, call' iii at tho \illdgcs above named; collect .all tho cuuent news* and at early evo> canoe back They would again call in and land at Kga Uranga, inform that village tho news, and then canoe back homo, with all the nows of the day. And so the desenptive name, Nga Uianga, tho place of landings; the halfway house. Again, the Boaid —"Aorangi means neithei Skypieieei, nor Cloud of Heaven. Aoiangi was tho name of a child in the Arai-te-uru canoe that coasted Cantoibuiy; and when the Maon wa^ asked, why the name of a child was given to the loftiest mountain, he loplied that the child was earned'on tho shoulder of his grandfather, and so was higher than any of them." Foi sheer story telling that takes tho bun1 The htetal and intended moaning af the name is- Ao, Atmosphere; l?angi, Skj; Ao langi; Sky-atmosphere; higher, or, upper atmosphere; it reaches a highoi N atmospheie than does its fellows, That; rcfeis to the southern Aorangi. Tho name occurs, with the same meaning, in various of the superior heights of tho North Island; it is descriptive.,, "TOLAGA" FOX "TUEANGA." An admitted weakness of the board appears m its treatment of tho "Tolaga" of Cook In this it seems to ha\ c created foi itsojf a difficulty which does not ically e-wst. When properly analysed the trim tor which Tolaga. is the substitute stands plainly revealed. Theio is no lin Maori, and it is well known that that letter is frequently substituted for the Maori r. Thcie is no such combination in Maori as "aga"; and it is equally well known that that foim is commonly substituted for anga; fiom the time of Cook to the presQnt day. Clearly then, tho "Hga" of Cook is substituted for the truo "langa." The "To" of Cook ought to bo legarded as "Too"; and i>o pionounccd. All of which now gives us a misspelt hut perfectly pronounqed Too ranga. If that be written Tunnga, wo have at once the proper denvativo and also the true original name for Tolaga Bay, which name is, in full, Tuianga-iti. Tho propor name of Gisborne is, in full, Tulanga nm; that of its neighbour, Turangaiti; and it is the Turanga of this which Cook has converted into Tolaga. In any case, Tolaga itself is mispronounced. No sound in Maori justifies that "tol" sound. The proper way to w i ite this name is with a hyphen, To laga; that would perhaps rid- it of the mispronounced "Tol"-; "Tol-aga" is bad. The board dopiecates the use.of the hyphen and in doing so produces the monstrosity Wavaniwaniwa, which it describes as "tho single beautiful woicl. '' Wai Aniw anhva,. or Wai-ani-waniwa, is the name of tho falls oil tho Kerikori stream, near Waitangi. It means Rainbow waterl And many a portion of rainbow is reflocted in that waterfall. In effect, tho board terms Kaiiibowwatcr as a single beautful word. For tho rest, the use of tho hyphen is necessary in almost every word of a compound form. It is an instruction arid an education. So the board itself commits! some errors, it corrects others; and leaves others still unconected. Doubtless the board has had in mind the axiom, ''a half-loaf is better than no bread." But surely that axiom does not apply to the matters under discussion. It is really a shame to allow to the mutilated forms of our place-names a continuing existence. No right of recent pakeha usage ought to bo allowed to supplant tho superior right of one of the purest atul most euphonious languages, to say nothing of tho superior right of prolonged and prior correct Native usage. One may conclude with an appeal to all interested, mclflding Mr. W. H. Field, M P , a persistent advocate for these corrections, to hasten to the rescue of a worthy cause.