AOTEAROA WAS NOT THE MAORI NAME FOR NZ – IT WAS MADE UP BY AN ENGLISHMAN
Can we stop this changing of our country’s name by stealth, please?!!! We had a referendum on the flag. Surely our country’s name is even more important!
Dame Naida Glavish said on TV in June 2020: “It was Aotearoa before a foreign sailor came along here.” It was not. She doesn’t know her history! It was not mentioned in the Treaty either because it hadn’t been invented then.
Abel Tasman ( Dutch) landed here in 1642 to get water… he didn’t stay long ‘cos four of his men were killed by Maori, writing later that they left “since we could not hope to enter into friendly relations with these people, or to be able to get water or refreshments here.”
However, in 1643 the States-General (Parliament) of Holland named New Zealand, (Nieuwe Zeeland). So… we have had this name for 377 years and even the English didn’t see fit to change it. There was no Maori name for NZ because Maori did not see themselves as a nation, just tribes, nor did they have a written language. ( Before anyone jumps up and down and takes offence I am merely stating a fact… nothing derogatory is implied!).
In 1890 a pakeha bod, Stephenson Percy Smith made up a name for New Zealand, Aotearoa, to go with his fictional tale of Kupe. He was an ethnologist. He was born in Suffolk in 1840 and grew up on a Taranaki farm from 1850. He wrote the theory of the Great Fleet. He was a founder of the Polynesian Society and worked with the Māori scholar Hoani Te Whatahoro Jury.
******************************
In the 1844 “A Dictionary of the Maori Language” by Herbert Williams, which is the most comprehensive book of the New Zealand language there has ever been, the word Aotearoa is not in it. The word Aotea appears as follows:
Aotea, n. 1. A species of thistle, Kia awhitia koe ki te patiti ki te taru aotea e tu ki te ngahere (Wa. 1, 51). Note.—The expression taru aotea occurs in M. 291, apparently with another meaning.
It was not in the 1957 version either:
****************************
Michael King, who wrote what is widely recognised as New Zealand’s most complete history book, “The Penguin History of New Zealand”, wrote:
“In fact in the pre-European era, Maori had no name for the country as a whole. Polynesian ancestors came from motu or islands and it was to islands that they gave names.”
********************************
Image courtesy of Derek Bowman.
Thank you Ed for that very interesting and informative article; and for reminding us that If you destroy the history and give the people no reference point as to where they come from, then you destroy society.
Given that dl’, luxflakes and see-less’s WHO / WEF / Communist etc tasks are o create a ‘New society’ in this country this championing of the name is understandable, especially as Millenials have no knowledge of such things and are consequently easy to lead.
You don’t need to be a child to be led…
Unfortunately, language changes (and can be molded by opinion leaders) over time. Words are only symbols for underlying concepts.
Get enough people to use a name and it will stick. Names of political entities are political.
It’s a battle.
I haven’t seen that reference to the great fleet before.
I have always had doubts about canoes travelling long distances in such challenging seas.
After all that effort to get here they then set about attacking each other?
Many questions to be asked.
The activist maori really do not like people using this term.
Though it I think it should be used much more 🙂
Niu Tirani,
also variously ‘Niu Tireni’, ‘Niu Tirini’, ‘Niutereni’ or ‘Nu Tirani’, was the main early Maori name for New Zealand;
https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195583489.001.0001/acref-9780195583489-e-912
An expample of the use of Niu Terani in the newspaper that ran from 1842 to 1878
Hōhepa Poutama signed the Treaty of Waitangi on 28 April 1840 at Kaitāia.
He was appointed as a land assessor in 1850.
Hōhepa Poutama died on 14 May 1876 at the age of 75.
A death notice in “Te Waka Maori o Niu Tirani” noted that he ‘had been an assessor for many years, and was very attentive and painstaking in the discharge of the duties of his office.’
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/treaty/signatory/1-194
Swap that term in where any one uses aotearoa to you,,, Watch the eruption. 🙂
While one can say you are using the old time official maori name recognition, respecting those old time maoris.
Nuitragena, (health supplements)
Niu Terani = New Tyranny
The war here has been won- The words ‘New Zealand’ have been phased out.
No communications at my current contracted work (a Government Agency) are allowed to use that term for our country.
The problem is- How do they get people overseas to start calling it ‘Aoteaaroooa’?
Not everyone is as woke and left wing as New Zealanders…
“No communications at my current contracted work (a Government Agency) are allowed to use that term for our country.”
Who would make the decision to replace “New Zealand” with the A-word?
I guess a Minister would make the call, and then order the civil servants to enforce it.
Did an individual or a committee make this decision?
I would like to know their names.
It should be possible to trace the decision back to its source (there would be a paper trail), if your bosses were open and transparent. But they are not.
Where did the orders originate?
I think the maorifaction is driven by the pms office!
They would never have got off the ground, without a nudge, nudge, wink wink!
Wonder if the new flag will be raibow coloured!
Thank goodness white is still a colour, but is it a rainbow colour?
And the PM’s office is dictated to by the hori caucus. It’s Toots Mahuta and Little Willie Jackson driving this imposition.
New Zealand. Mount Egmont.
Mount Cook. Wanganui. (no ‘H’)
New Zealand Transport Agency. Just to name a few
that have been ‘maorified’.
It is only a few hate-filled, racist,
part maori who are pushing this
trash, aided and abetted by the vile
creature’s government, and media prostitutes.