AOTEAROA

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 109, 11 May 1939, Page 12

AOTEAROA

NOT AOTEA-ROA

NOR AO-TEA-ROA

How do you spell it?

The three 'flying-boats for the transTasman (transtasman or.Transtasman) service are still 13,000 miles away, but already an argument grows over the spelling of, the name AO-TEA-ROA shown so boldly in photographs of— the Aotearoa. The hyphens stick in the throat; two are too many. They I should not, in fact, be there at all, and the name should be 'spelt (or spelled) straight ahead, Aotearoa.

"One, word, certainly, because that is correct, and because the unbroken name is more beautiful than a halting, hyphenated name," said Mr. Johannes C. Andersen, formerly librarian at the Turnbull Library.

"Ap," he said, signified a cloud or the world; "tea," white; and "roa," long; so that.the place name was built of a noun and two adjectives. All practice, in English as well as in native place names, was to regard the hanie as a whole. Tor instance, Redcliffs, near Christchurch, was first Red Cliffs; it was purely descriptive, a guide to anyone. ' By common usage the name became later Red-Cliffs, but today no other spelling than Redcliffs was ever given. • ,

The .Maori, said Mr. Andersen, did not pronounce his place names as if they were broken into distinct descriptive sections, unless he was assisting a" European to follow him in pronunciation; he ran each section on into a smooth-running word, a new placename. The hyphens, said Mr. Andersen, should go.

Mr. H. D. Bennett was quite as definite. The Maori, he'said, « knew nothing of written language and the

spellings given their words and place names, were simply by application of the English alphabet and writing. His place names were not merely descriptive; they were complete new words, and if one started breaking- up such a word as Aotearoa, then, logically, half the place-names in New Zealand should be broken up..

Who would justify for' a moment the splitting up of such a place name as Waipukurau? sajd Mr. Bennett. It could be done: "Wai," water; "puku," a turmoil; "rau," a hundred, or numerous; but what a laborious mental process was there involved', compared with the complete name picture-of the boiling up of waters/ "Tara," the ridge, "naki" shearing upwards, was not Tara-naki. a literal description of the country, but a new place word with poetry as well as description in 'it. .'.■...'

Ao-Tea-Roa was. wrong, said Mr. Bennett, and it could and should be Corrected now,,for it would be a pity if a mistake was made in the air, as a mistake was made years ago when the first Rangitiki, the sailing ship, was launched. A second Rangitiki followed her, and now the third Rangitiki perpetuated the initial mistake. An uncomfortable mistake had already been made in the naming of one of the New Zealand airliners, continued Mr. Bennett. They were supposedly, named after the birds of the air, but the spelling had gone wrong with Kahu, which should be Kaahu, the far-flying ,hawk. "Here comes •' the Kahu—not the hawk, the cloth, the j ■rag." •■. •; , : ...,.'...' .-; I HYPHENS ADDED OVERSEAS. The overdoing of the hyphenation of Aotearoa is not the fault of anyone in New Zealand, for, when he made further inquiries, a "Post" reporter was told that when the craft names were suggested—-Aotearoa, Australia, and Awarua—Aotearoa was the smoothrunning, one-word poem that New Zealand understands, but someone must have questioned it, worried over too many syllables, and decided to make it simple for everyone, but the beauty of the word itself and the completeness of the picture had been, spoiled. One of the flying-boats should be in New Zealand next month, but even if it is the Aotearoa there is tim,© for the repainting of the name so that New Zealand shall not be too surprised when she is welcomed.