AOTEAROA

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 117, 20 May 1939, Page 7

AOTEAROA

A POETIC NAME

HOW KUPE GAVE IT, AND WHY

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—You may have space for a few more remarks on this name for New Zealand. I should like' to say something in response to the letter.ty Mr. J. S. Webb in your issue of May 15. In a name there should be no hyphens seeing it is one word, though in drawing attention to the descriptive nature of the name when given, hyphens assist in showing what the components parts were. Three words have merged ?.n one, as three islands are implied in the musical name Aotearoa.

A barest outline of the history of the giving of the name long ago will assist. It is said that the great Polynesian navigator explorer Kupe is the one who gave the name. He was sailing west from his home in the Pacific, and one • morning when in the neighbourhood of the still unseen New Zealand, whilst looking ahead, he said: "I see a cloud: it betokens land." His wife looked, and immediately erie/1: "He ao! he ao!" (A cloud! a cloud!) It was a long cloud, and the season being summer I suppose it would naturally be white; and when Kupe eventually, on the land swimming into view, said the name of the land should be Aotearoa, it .is natural to suppose that tie had in mind the long white cloud floating above it and seen by him and eagerly announced by his wife.

I was away from New Zealand for the first time in 1936, and when on my joyful return in November of that year, I was astir early on the morning we were to catch the first glimpse of land. It was a cold morning, and I was alone in the bows. It was a "gurly" sea—New Zealand is guarded by a ring of sea like th one so vividly described in the old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens—and I watched to see if I might catch sight of that long, white cloud-seen by Kupe and his adventurous people near a thousand years ago. I was looking right ahead, and was disappointed when I saw no cloud in that direction, though in scanning the horizon I saw one further to the south, along the tops of the Moehau (Coromandel) Peninsula. Suddenly I remembered that Kupe did not make the land at Auckland, but further south at the eastern side of the Bay of Plenty, when he would have- Moehau ahead. So I was satisfied; I had seen the long white cloud, only it was grey; and I left the cold deck, thinking of Kupe and his adventurous band coming to Aotearoa to be greeted on shore by the glow of the pohutukawa and the sunshine that spills so freely in Aotearoa. ,

It is all right so far. But there is more. The Maori is a poet in the creation of names; so beautiful they are, so packed with meaning; and whilst the name Aotearoa may well have been descriptive, it has an added association that makes it even dearer to the Maori—it is the name of at least two places in that region of the Pacific from whence he came: , there is an Aotearoa in Tahiti, another in Rarotonga. To me, to many of us, Aotearoa is this delightful land of cloud, of sunshine, of mountain diversified, of ever-changing, sparkling water; a land of beauty. To the Maori it is that, and something in addition; and the addition the Maori knows is gradually but deeply steeping our own hearts —it is home, with all the added thoughts and associations of home. But taihoa; taihoa; not so fast. When Kupe returned and told his story, he was asked many questions among others he was asked: "Why did you call the new-found land Aotearoa, and not Irihia or Te Hono-i-wairua, after the homeland our race originated in?" And Kupe replied: "I preferred the warm breast to the cold one; the new land to the old land long forsaken." The question and reply show, firstly, how the Maori loved association-names; and secondly, that at least some of them found more warmth, of attraction in newer life and newer associations, as we ourselves did when we adventured here a hundred years ago. As regards the meaning "the land of lingering daylight," with which I was familiar, the above will, I think, show that such a meaning was not in the mind of Ktipe. Besides it would not be until they had lived in the land that that meaning would strike them or appeal to them; and then it. would appeal more to those in the south than to those in the north. Again, a poetic name is like a jewel; many varied lights glow from it; many varied meanings. And, lest some other correspondent point it out, let me add that another meaning has been suggested—not only by the pakeha but even -by the Maori himself. It is said that he called" it Aotearoa because of the length of time he had been in crossing the ocean; because of the anxiety he had felt as to whether he should reach land; and also because of his wife Hine-te-aparangi and their daughter fearing they might be lost at sea. Hine was sick of the sea; the daughter had had enough of its dangers and discomforts; and there was relief in the delight with which the mother called out: "He ao! he ao!"

Kupe and his people sleep; rest their souls; but the name they gave birth to dreams on for ever, with ourselves, our forbears, our descendants, Maori and pakeha, intermingling parts of that dream.

JOHANNES ANDERSEN, May 17, 1939. ________