How Otaki Derived Its Name

Chronicle (Levin), 19 August 1949, Page 2

How Otaki Derived Its Name

■ -V Recent mention that Otaki was named by Te Rauparaha has fceen challenged in several quarters, and two well known authorities have supplied , their reasons for doubting the correctness • of the claim. Mr. Selwyn Simcox writes: "I wonder by what methods of research, as recently reported, a speaker stated that Otaki was named by Te Rauparaha, and is to be translated to read, 'I will lead.' For more than two deeades following Te Rauparaha's oceupation about 1822, the name Otaki referred to the river, or at first probably i.to the lower part of it. When the pakeha and Maori settlement was formed after 1840, it was called Hadfield, which was changed to Otaki when Mr. Hadfield retired to Wellington in 1844. He did not return permanently to Otaki until 1850. "It wo'uld be interesting to know what the name of Otaki or the river was toefor# Te Rauparaha came. He stayed a while and visited Kapiti about 1819, and the Otaki River must have had a name then. At that time the Ngatiapa occupied the "district. They had ousted the Ngatimanoe, successors to the Waitaha. The Maoris were careful to give names to places, usually after some happening or characteristic and (though I know no Maori) often composed of two nouns or a noun and an aciiective. Otaki — I will lead. Did they name places with a verb? "From 1840 onwards the district from Paekakariki to as far as the Manawatu ' was known to the Church Mis§ionary Society as the parish of Kapiti. In 1864 Mr. Hadfield signs himself Archdeacon of Kapiti. The spelling Aotaki is almost certainly incorrect. If so it might be better to change the name of the street before usage makes it a permanent error." Maori elders subscribe to the belief that the chieftain and prophet Hau, who traversed the shores of Aotearoa many deeades before Te Rauparaha's conquest, was responsible for many of the names along both the West and East coasts. An interpretation of the peregrinations of Hau, accompanied early by his daughter, "who came from afar, and embarked in the canoe Aotea, the canoe of the chief Turi, who forde'd the Whenuakura (Patea River) at its mouth and made the house of Rangitawi (Patea Pa)" is furnished as follows : "Procee'ding south, Hau took up some sand in his hand and his staff, and when he crossed another river and found it was wide he named it Whanga-nui. Splashing water he named Wangaehu, while a lengthy fallen tree created the name Turakina. Rangitikei was so calle'd because he was wearying 'having many times lifted up his feet,' and Manawatu was so named because 'his heart sank within him'; by now he was apparently becoming exhausted. Hokio was so called because the wind whistled past his ears, and the next smallish river was named Ohau. "Carrying his staff in a horizontal position he came across a small level clearing in the bush, which he called Otaki. The spot where he prayed for his daughter he called Waimea and, sighcing yet another river out of the corner of his eye, he calle'd it Waikanae. A rock near the Porirua Harbour, on which Hau rested, he named Wairaka, and further on still a vision of his daughter was so fixed as to 'make his eyes glisten with delight,' and on this place he bestowed the name Wairarapa." While some of the names so bestowed have not a clear meanmg, elders agree that the circumstances relating to the naming of rivers and adjacent places coincide with the method which Mr. Simcox states was used.