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Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 May 1939, Page 8

When Maori words creep into the prosaic nomenclature of an English city they are apt, not surprisingly to puzzle the many citizens who know little or nothing of New Zealand and its inhabitants. This, inquiry was published recently in the “Sunday Times,” London, under the heading “Greek at Leatherhead”:—“On the outskirts of Leatherhead, at the ‘roundabout’ by the gasworks, I often drive past a row of small houses called ‘Kaiapoi Cottages.’ The word has a distinctly Greek appearance, as if it should be pronounced “Caiaroi.’ Can any of your readers tell me the origin of this odd name? —K. T. Dowding, Whitewalls, Kingsbury Green, N.W.9.” Apparently no one in the newspaper office through whose hands the inquiry passed could draw for the correspondent the necessary distinctions between Greek and Maori; it will be surprising indeed if tl}e inquirer has not, by now, received enlightenment from a good many of the New Zealanders domiciled in London.