MAORI PLACE NAMES
Sir,-In your issue of November 6 is a photograph of a signpost which makes a prize example of how names should not be shown, Below it is the question, "What’s in a name?" There is a good deal in Maori names-history, geography, poetry, interest. Some names have obvious meanings; some are obscure. (One could say the same of English names.) In the illustration, the first thing that caught my eye was the familiar Pokai Whenua. This is a tributary of the Waikato, which joins the main river at Horahora. Pokai means a coil or a loop, and Whenua is simpty Land. Pokai Whenua is commonly translated as "a wanderer across the land." It seems to me a simple and pleasant name, one which should be far more obvious to New Zealanders than, say, Saskatchewan. The difficulty with Maori names lies in our bad habit of writing a number of short easy words in the form of one long word. thatcouldbemadeunreadablebythesamemeans. People of British descent usually find these long words difficult, no matter what language they are written in. We have no responsibility for the peculiarities of German, but the difficulties of Maori are of our own making. They tend to destroy correct pronunciation, and also to obscure the meaning. For .example, it does not take long to learn that "rua" is the numeral "two," and that Roto Rua was "the second lake" which the Maori travellers reached when they came inland from the Bay of Plenty. The name Waikare Moana is understood by many people, But when two words or more are written as: one (as in Waikaremoana and Rotorua) the simple meaning becomes lost, and then a redundant word "Lake" is added, as if to emphasise ignorance of the names of
our native land. I wonder if the NZBS recording mentioned includes Wairarapa, with each syllable ending in a vowel, as it should? I am sorry to have to admit that I do not speak Maori, but I cannot agree that it is a difficult language, unless you set out to make it so by mishandling
the words.
A.
LUSH
(Christchurch).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 752, 11 December 1953, Page 5
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355MAORI PLACE NAMES New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 752, 11 December 1953, Page 5
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