Some Place Names.

The misspelling of some of our New Zealand names of places quite robs these names of their original significance. There are Maori place names of much beauty and of poetic and legendary value, which is lost by the mishandling of them in print. One of our dailies the other day gave quite a charming account of the sylvan loveliness and the teeming native bird life of a place on D'Urville Island officially called Manawakupukupu. That name, to those who are acquainted with Maori, is obviously misspelled. Really it should be Manawa-Kapakapa, which has a definite meaning. This correct version may be translated as “Fluttering Heart” or “Throbbing Heart,” which at once captures the imagination and arouses interest in the possible reason for the name given by some long-ago Maori explorer. And the account of that island retreat, with its bush and its bird-song and its air of repose suggests, also, what a place it should be to-day as a solace for that too-troubled heart.

There are music and beauty, too, in some of the original names of places around Wellington. Moera is an example. It is the steep sloping ground about where Marama Crescent is now, above the south side of Te Aro gully road, in Wellington City. One or two Maori families had their homes and cultivations there, and the spot was called Moe-ra, which means “Sleeping in the Sun.” That is the original Moera. The name has been given, in recent years, to a Lower Hutt Valley suburb, and it is consistently mispronounced Mo-ee-ra. The accent should be on the first syllable.

Raurimu, which means “Leaves of the Red Pine,” is the old name of a Maori clearing on Thorndon Flat. It is a pity the name has not been preserved as one of the street names.

Tangi-te-keu is one of the ancient names of Mt. Victoria, Wellington's Signal Station. It means “The Cry of the Wind.” Evidently it knew how to blow there in the days of the mat-clad Maori just as it does to-day.

Pukehinau (“Hill of the Hinau Tree”) is the Maori name of the hill slopes where Victoria University College, Wellington, stands. The name reminds us of the pre-pakeha days, when the hills were bushclad, and when the hinau tree of the beautiful white flowers and purple berries was plentiful here.

The site of the War Memorial Campanile, where we hear the carillon, the hill so inappropriately called Mt. Cook, was known to the Maoris as Puke-ahu, which signifies a hill heaped up or piled up in an even symmetrical shape.