The Meaning of “Monowai.”

A subject of some recent controversy has been the name of Lake Monowai, which has been given to one of our large liners. One newspaper correspondent after another has aired his views and exhibited his ignorance of the name's origin. Maori place-names are full of pitfalls for those who simply look up Williams' Dictionary for translations. It is unsafe to venture on translations without making enquiries from old Maoris in the district concerned. Many years ago, when in the Southern Lakes country, I looked up some of the aged members of the Ngati-Mamoe and Ngai-Tahu tribes on the Southland coast in order to elucidate the name-giving. Monowai had puzzled me; it was obviously not a genuine Maori name. Some people have imagined it might have been “Manowai.” Not so, said two old men of Oraka (Colac Bay). It was correctly Manokiwai, a personal name which had been given to the lake by its ancient discoverers. The pakehas had mangled it. But this did not explain altogether the change to Monowai. That explanation I obtained a little later on, in 1903, from Mr. James McKerrow, late Surveyor-General. He was the first surveyor to map the Waiau River, in Southland, and the lakes which it drained.

That was back in 1862. He did not know much Maori, and he imperfectly caught the name given him by the Maoris when he made enquiries. This particular lake of the woods west of the Waiau, on the border of Fiordland, he set down on his sketch-map as Monowai, the nearest he could get to it, and the first word in it he borrowed from the Greek, “monos,” meaning one. He thought this would be not inappropriate, for the lake was fed chiefly by one river. Thus we have Monowai on our maps, meaning “one water,” a half-caste Greek and Maori name, and pleasing and euphonious withal.

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