PLACE-NAMES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21473, 22 April 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

PLACE-NAMES

A FURTHER SURVEY

BY JCOTAKE

The dosiro to perpetuate names of the Homeland, to link up the aggressively new with the rich associations of the Old World, gave us many of tho place-names of our pioneer and middle periods. Dunedin was at first labelled Now Edinburgh. There was much talk, about it and about, before a final decision was reached. Hocken summarises the controversy in a brief paragraph which 1 shall quote in full. It expresses admirably the difficulties common to the naming both of towns and infants. There are so many interested people to please, and both present and future to consider. At least wo can see that, as befits a Scottish town, the name was not given without the most careful consideration. This then is Hocken's version. It had been announced that New Edinburgh was tho name chosen. " There was some discussion in tho papers regarding this clumsy name. It was found that already was there an unlucky Now Edinburgh situated somewhere in tho boggy Isthmus of Darien. Some thought New Reekie quite as good, if not a better name; others suggested Edina, Ossian, Mooretown, Bruce, Burns, Duneantown, Napiertown, Holyroodtown, Wallacetown: though it long continued to bear the name New Edinburgh, probably because grateful associations were likely to attract a desired class, yet it was christened Dunedin so early as October 30, 1843, a name which was not officially adopted until 1846." By tho way, when it first was called Dunedin its exact location had not yet been determined. In 1844 surveyors were still investigating what we now call Canterbury as a suitable site for the new settlement. And it was four and a-lmlf years after tho christening before the town became a reality with tho arrival of tho first settlers. Dunedin and Christchurch

Tho name Dunedin was suggested by William Chambers, a well-known figure c in Edinburgh. It was an old form of Edinburgh, and has practically tho same meaning. Tho streets of the new town wero called after the chiof thoroughfares of tho old Scottish city: Princes and George and St. Andrew's and so on. There is even a Canongate. And suburbs proclaimed the familiar Edinburgh names, Musselburgh, Portobe] lo and so on. The local stream was called the Leith.

Christchurch a few years later brought a multitude of English names. Canterbury was a suitable name for a province founded by Englishmen and the English Church. There was, however, a Scot who had already staked his claim on the site of tlio new town, and some of his names have been carried over into the new order. Riccarton was the name of the farm on which the original Deans family had been brought up in Ayrshire. The Avon was a tributary of the Clyde, with which the Deans had been familiar iu their boyhood. The Scottish stream is pronounced with the vowels of "talon." The English settlers discarded the Scottish pronunciation and substituted the English form. They even in time came to believe that their beautiful river was called after the Avon on which Shakespeare's birthplace stands. Christchurch called its original streets after the English and Irish and colonial bishoprics. That accounts for such names as Barbadoes and Madras amid Gloucester and St. Asaph and Worcester. Both Canterbury and Otago, as might be expected from the conditions of their early colonisation, abound in names of this association type. England and Scotland might bo half the world away, but the old names lived on, and with the names the old traditions took root and flourished in the new soil. The Old World We have not many of the New Edinburgh type. There is New Zealand, of course, and New Plymouth records for all time that the first Taranaki settlers were West-Country folk. Feikling (that is the correct spelling of the name) was established in the seventies by immigrants selected by an English company whoso chairman was the Duke of Manchester, and whose representative was Colonel Feilding. Kimbolton, another town on the block, was originally called Birmingham, but it was modestly thought that there might bn some confusion between the great English city and its New Zealand namesake. To obviate all possible trouble the local name was altered. Dannevirke was called after a village in Southern Denmark. It was founded by Scandinavian settlers about 1870, and called by them after a spot very dear to them in their own land, a town near which much of the fighting in Bismarck's iniquitous Austro-Prussian raid on Denmark had taken place. Warkworth and Dovonport suggest themselves among local names. .Our literary names are very few. Otago has a 'Mosgiel, after the farm on which Robert Burns spent so much of his physical energy with, alas, no return except a ruined constitution. Close to Mosgiel i 3 Abbotsford, which is usually supposed to derive from a settler named Abbot who had a ford at this place. I hope Abbot is a myth and his ford apocryphal. It seems too much of a coincidence that Abbotsford, the name of Scott's famous Border home, should stand in New Zealand cheek by jowl with the name of Burns farm. But coincidences like that do often happen. Stratford was called after Shakespeare's birthplace, and the Shakespearean tradition was carried out as far as possible in the names of its streets. Napier has a distinct literary flavour. Alfred Domett, himself a poet of distinction, had tho task of giving the names to tho streets of the now town, and he called them in honour of outstanding figures in tho literary and scientific worlds. There you will find a Shakespeare Road and an Emerson Street, a Browning Street, a Tennyson Street. Ship-Name3 Some few of our names have been given from a fancied resemblance to well-known spots in the Homeland. Milford Sound reminded early naval visitors of Milford Haven, the deep indentation in tho Welsh coast. Cook had begun this species of nomenclature bv giving the name Thames. Cook also made popular tho assigning of descriptive names. Tho Bay of Islands, 1< lat Point, Mount Camel, White Island, Gannet Island arc further contributions by Cook. Muddy Creek is a local example that comes readily to mind. The miners in all fields had a genius for this kind of thjng. Otago has a Drybread, a Mullocky Gully, and thcro are innumerable Spud Gullies, Brandy Gullies, Duffer's Gullies and so on. There are'still four Gentle Annies—in Otago and Nelson and tho Thames district. Ship-names are fairly common. There is Tryphena on the Barrier, Bombay and Miranda near Auckland, a Britomart in the heart of Auckland. Wellington calls two of its streets after tho ships that brought the early settlers, the Tory and the Cuba. Marlborough has a Tory Channel called after tho first ship that sailed through it, and an Endeavour Inlet. Stewart Island has its Port Pegasus.