The “New” Abomination.

In his letter suggesting the name, Dunedin, Chambers wrote: “I would at all events hope that names of places with the prefix ‘new’ should be sparingly had recourse to. The ‘news’ in North America are an utter abomination, which it has been lately proposed to sweep out of the country. It will be a matter for regret if the New Zealand Company help to carry the nuisance page 30 page 31

(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Picton—the ever popular holiday resort in the Marlborough Sounds.

to the territories with which it is concerned.”

A year or two before this the country had been officially saddled with three “news.” The charter for erecting “The Colony of New Zealand,” signed by Queen Victoria on November 16th, 1840, declared that the three principal islands should be known respectively as New Ulster, New Munster, and New Leinster. Governor Hobson, who was an Irishman, is said to have been responsible for these names. Happily they were soon discarded.

Port Chalmers was to have been called either New Leith or New Musselburgh. Perhaps Chambers’ hint led the Scottish Free Church founders of the settlement in Otago to name the port after Thomas Chalmers, one of the leaders of the Free Church at the time of the Great Disruption in 1843.