The Evening Star SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 1945. HARBOUR NAMES.

Evening Star, Issue 25470, 28 April 1945, Page 6

The Evening Star SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 1945. HARBOUR NAMES.

The chairman of the Otago Harbour Board, Mr R. S. Thompson, has performed a service by the minute which he presented at its latest meeting dealing with some aspects of the harbour's nomenclature. Place names are history when they have a meaning; when they have no meaning to speak of they are misapplied. And the record of the past times of a country or a settlement that has not gone backward is worth knowing and worth understanding, because such knowledge fosters respect for it and helps men to act worthily in the days that are. Only a first sentence of Mr Thomson's minute might seem to have been expressed unfortunately. It states that " a certain number of the bays and headlands in the harbour were named before the arrival of the early settlers in 1843, consequently names are being perpetuated that have little, if any, connection -with the early history of Otago." That sentence, as its' context shows, is not meant to express any minor measure of regard for

The Lord's lone sentinels, Dotted down the years, The little grey company, Before the pioneers.

That the chairman did not mean that any lack of honour should _ be shown to those forerunners of organised settlement is made plain by* tse list of names for which he proposed that substitutes should be found. Not one of their'personal names is included in it. Instead we are told that " Mussel Bay, Grassy Point, Rocky Point, Pudding Island, Boiler Point are place names that hardly stir the imagination," an opinion that must generally be endorsed. It was suggested that these spots, with three others—Dowling Bay, Hamilton Bay, and Cemetery Point—should be renamed after ships that brought the early settlers to Otago. To this, with the exception of only one designation, we would agree more readily, because the time is passing for commemoration of these earliest ships' names on Anniversary Days; by the assembling of survivors of those who sailed by them. It seems possible that the original Dowling and the Rev. J. Vesey Hamilton were too much honoured by Dunedin's first surveyor, Kettle, when friendship, as it is implied, helped in one case by relationship to a founder, caused their names to be commemorated as they have been. But these questions can be complicated. Dowling, whose name is preserved also in Dowling street, was not only the nephew of Mr George Rennie, the originator of the Otago Scheme; he was the secretary of its Edinburgh Committee, which does not seem, however, to have been oppressed with business. " Cemetery Point" surely is fossil history. Accordingly, that name should be preserved, to recall that a cemetery once existed at the spot so designated. Names that are misspelt, as Mr Thompson pointed out, should be spelt correctly, and. we can agree that " South " Endowment is not inspiring. But renaming should not be such as makes confusion, and the suggestion to change Water street to Wicfkliffe street, to perpetuate the landing of pioneers from one of the first two ships, when a Wickliffe street exists already, becomes debatable. Others, besides Mr Thompson, must have wondered why the name of the surveyor Tuckett, who selected and purchased the site of the Otago settlement, should never have been commemorated in Otago's nomenclature. We drew attention to this omission years ago, when the name of Kettle, his successor, was conferred, quite properly, on a new park. New streets must have been named since then, but still the directory knows not Tuckett, though his' ship's name has been perpetuated in Deborah Bav. Yet Tuckett was a notable man if he had never come near Otago, and his relationship with this province was of the first importance. The Early Settlers' Association, to which Mr' Thompson's minute was referred, might well give its consideration to the omission.