Untitled

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5370, 1 February 1879, Page 4

Mr. Supple, who writes an excellent letter iu another column, has a very good case, and appears to be woll-inform ;d on tho whole subject. But he makes some extraordinary mistakes iu dealiug with New Zealand. He says the native name of the North Island is " Abinomauvve." and of the South Island, " Tavai Ponamoo." These are the names attached to the old maps, but they are erroneous, as beiug merely caught up by the ear from the pronunciation of the natives in early times. In the first place, the Maoris weie not in the habit of speaking of tho whole country by a distinctive name. To them it was the world, and they used much more the names of localities and particular places. When Captain Cook asked the Mauris the name of the North Islund, they said it was " Te-ika-a-Maui" —the land fished up by Maui from the sea, and hence the "Ahinomauwe" and other such names in the old maps. Iu like manner the South Island was "To Wai Ponamou," or " Te Wahi Ponamou" —the place where the greenstone was obtained. But the original, genuine name for New Zealand, known to all the Maoris, and whioh could not be exeelled for sweetness, is " Aotearoa." The last syllable simply means "large," so that,

if we are to change the name of few Z-alau.'l, >nd certaiuly there ire good reasons for the change, would it not bw best simply to t»o hick to " Antea ?" Great inconvenience has been ciused by stupid attempts to change well-known native names, eoraetirneß, happily, in vain. Even the somewhat difcult name of Ngaruawahia h*s asserted itself. Tue authorities must needs, whe>> place was taken possvsson •f, in 1864. call it " Newcastle," and Post offije and Telegraph held on t > the abaur.iity for years, although it waa called Ngiruawahia by almost everybody, and although letters w re daily coming to it which ought to have gone to Newcastle in New South Wales, or someone of half-a-dozen other Ne*ca>tles in existence, and no end of mistakes were occurring. However, the Gazette ha-* put that right, and p >pular good tasta has beaten official want of good sense and good taste. But we lately saw am)vetn»nt in the other direction, it having been officially nocified that the postoffice hitherto known as " Waitoa" should henceforward anil for over be known as— Morriusville I At whose instance this was perpetrated we do not know. One would have thought that popular novelists and satirists had of late years cast ridicule enough upon the custom o£ namiug plac s by affixing "ville" to some familiar surname. Sometimes, iudeed, a change may be necessary, and we ar« quite ready to excuse the substitution of *Huatly*'for "Rahaipapeko." By the way, we have no such excuse for sticking absurd n trnes to places as existed in America. There, an immeaso tract of country wonlil be kuown as Ohio or Minnesota, but being sparsely populated, particular sp its had no native name. But in New ZeaUnd—in the North Island at all events—there was no necessity for Anglo-Saxons to tax their feeble imaginations in iaveuting nums. Every spot had a name, and no locality was better off in that respect than the Auckland district or the Waikato country.