TAUPO-NUI-A-TIA

Taupo Times, Volume I, Issue 45, 19 November 1952, Page 3

TAUPO-NUI-A-TIA

TALES OF THE TAUPO COUNTRY The old Maori names fcir New Zealand and its main islands carry the mind back to days long gone, when the ancestors oi the Maori people eame from Hawaiki across the rolling leagues of the Great Ocean of Kiwa. Those days are still spoken of on great oecasions, or perhaps round lonely campfiires. Aotea-roa as a name for New Zealand is well known to both Maori and pakeha, as is one of the several interpretations, "Long White Cloud," although this version is the least satisfactory of all. It was in the Taupo Country that I first heard an explanation of the name Aotea-roa which seems to me to be better than other's, and it was in Taupo also that I heard a little story illustrating in modern times a similar use of language to that involved in the explanation. This explanation lrecalls that when the first discoverer of New Zealand, Kupe, the earlier in history of two famous men of the same name, was approaching his landfall, which was made near the North Cape, his wife sighted in the distance a cloud and cried "He ao ! He ao ! ", "A cloud ! A cloud ! " and from this incident Kupe named the land Ao-tea-roa. The significance of this is as follows. Throughout the Pacific the Polynesian voyagers were familiar with the fact that over an island in frne weather a cloud would form as the day came on, and as soon as such a cloud was sighted they knew that it would not be long befccre the island below it appeared above the horizon. In his book "Vikings of the Sunrise" the late Te Kangihiroa, New Zealand's great Maori anthropologist, records just such an incident as this occurring when he made a voyage in a small schooner to a distant island. So it was that when Kupe's wife uttered her cry all those in the canoe, the Mata-hou-rua, knew at bnce that she meant that it was a cloud that betokened their approach at long last to land. They had set out from Kupe's home in Kaiatea, in the Tahiti group, and had visited Karatonga, . and from there set out on a voyage of discovery. And after the long weary days at sea the sighting of a cloud, with all it meant, must have excited the emotions of the crew as did Nicholas Young's sighting of Young Nick's Head rouse the crew of Captain Cook's Endeavour. Now for the meaning which Kupe meant to embody in his name, Ao-tea-roa. "Ao," of course, in this context, means a cloud, and "tea" means white, or shining. "Koa" means long, but does not refer to the cloud at all, but to the length of time since they had left Karatonga and voyaged befcire seeing an indication of land ahead. The inteirpretation is not based 011 grammar, but on the Polynesian way of thinking. Thus the name Ao-tea-roa given by Kupe might be translated as meaning the white cloud seen after a long time. This meaning is implicit in the old narrative, though difficult of concise expression in English. Now for an interesting « example given by the late Father Van Beek, of exactly the same manner of thinking in recent years. On visiting a family of his Maori parishioners in an isolated spot in the Taupo Country he was shown with pride an infant girl, whose birth had occurred since his previous visit. There were four or five boys in the family, but this was the first girl. Her name, he was informed, was Hina-roa, and the mother remarked that it might seem a strange name to him, for the name translated liter'ally would mean "Long Hina." But she went on to explain that the child was so called because here parents had waited a long time for the arrival of a daughter. Her explanation is a typically Polynesian as Kupe's naming of Ao-tea-roa.