Aotearoa
:
For other uses, see Aotearoa (disambiguation)Aotearoa (
pronounced: ) is the most widely known and accepted
Māori name for
New Zealand.
The original derivation of
Aotearoa is not known for certain.
Ao = cloud,
tea = white and
roa = long, and it is accordingly most often translated as "The land of the long white cloud". According to oral tradition, the daughter of explorer
Kupe saw white on the horizon and called "He ao! He ao!" ("a cloud! a cloud!"). The first land sighted was accordingly named
Aotea (White Cloud) and is now commonly known as
Great Barrier Island. When a much larger landmass was found beyond Aotea, it was called
Aotea-roa (Long Aotea). Thus Aotearoa is a traditional name only of the North Island, though it now commonly refers to the whole country.
There are several explanations of the origin of the word Aotearoa, of varying plausibility:
*One explanation derives the name from seafaring. The first sign of land from a boat is often cloud in the sky above the island. New Zealand's mountain ranges are longer and higher than elsewhere in the South Pacific and so they are particularly good at generating
standing waves. The resulting long
lenticular clouds are very different from the more usual
cumulus clouds seen elsewhere in the region. The sight of these clouds over either of the country's two main islands could easily have led to this name.
*A second explanation relates to the snow-capped nature of New Zealand's mountains, notably the long chain of the
Southern Alps which forms a backbone to the South Island, but also the
North Island Volcanic Plateau. Polynesian travellers, unused to snow, might well have seen these snowy peaks as a long white cloud.
*A third explanation is connected with New Zealand's location below the tropics.
Polynesian seafarers would have been used to tropical sunsets, in which the sky goes from daylight to night very rapidly, with little twilight. New Zealand, with its more southerly latitudes, would have provided surprisingly long periods of evening twilight to travellers from the tropics, and also surprisingly long summer days. It has been suggested that this long twilight is the actual origin of the term
Aotearoa, which therefore would better translate as "long light sky". The presence of the
Aurora Australis, and the vivid sunsets, are given as theories for the origin of part of the name for
Stewart Island/Rakiura, namely
Rakiura meaning "glowing sky".
In Māori
It is almost certain that the use of
Aotearoa to refer to the whole of New Zealand is a post-colonial usage. In pre-colonial times,
Māori did not have a commonly-used name for the whole New Zealand archipelago. Until the 20th century, it was common for Aotearoa to be used to refer to the
North Island only. As an example from the late 19th century, the first issue of
Huia Tangata Kotahi, a Māori language newspaper, dated 8 February 1893, contains the dedication on page 1: 'He perehi tenei mo nga iwi Maori, katoa, o Aotearoa, mete Waipounamu' (
This is a publication for the all Māori tribes of Aotearoa and the South Island) where 'Aotearoa' can only mean the North Island.
[Huia Tangata Kotahi can be viewed online at Niupepa: Māori Newspapers]Another well-known and presumably widely used name for the North Island is
Te Ika a Māui (The fish of
Māui). The
South Island was called
Te Wai Pounamu (The waters of
greenstone) or
Te Wāhi Pounamu (The place of greenstone).
[As a counterpart to Te Ika a Māui, the South Island is sometimes referred to as Te Waka o Māui (The Canoe of Māui), or Te Waka o Aoraki (The Canoe of Aoraki), depending on one's tribal connections. Most of the South Island is settled by the descendents of Aoraki, after whom the country's largest mountain is named (according to legend, he was turned into the mountain), but the northern end was settled by tribes who favour the Māui version.] After the adoption of the name
New Zealand by Europeans, the name used by Māori to denote the country as a whole was
Niu Tireni,
[The spelling varies, for example, the variant Nu Tirani appears in the Māori version of the Treaty of Waitangi.] a
transliteration of
New Zealand.
[When Abel Tasman reached New Zealand in 1642, he named it Staten Landt, believing it to be part of the land Jacob Le Maire had discovered in 1616 off the coast of Argentina. Staten Landt appeared on Tasman's first maps of New Zealand, but this was changed by Dutch cartographers to Nova Zelandia, after the Dutch province of Zeeland, some time after Hendrik Brouwer proved the South American land to be an island in 1643. The Latin Nova Zelandia became Nieuw Zeeland in Dutch. Captain James Cook subsquently called the islands New Zealand. It seems logical he simply applied English usage to the Dutch naming, but it has also been suggested he was possibly confusing Zeeland with the Danish island of Zealand.] This name is now rarely used as Māori no longer favour the use of transliterations from English. Nonetheless, it has been suggested that the use of Aotearoa to mean 'New Zealand' was initiated by
Pākehā (non-Māori) Historians (e.g.
Michael King) have theorised that it originated from mistakes in the
February 1916 School Journal and was thus propagated in a similar manner to the myths surrounding the
Moriori. Nonetheless Aotearoa is now the term used by Māori.
[Aotea is also sometimes encountered, but is rare, and in decline.]In English
The name
Aotearoa is used as an alternative name for New Zealand both by Māori and non-Māori. Although it has not gained official recognition as an alternative name for the country, it is becoming increasingly widespread in the names of national organisations, which are now bilingual, such as the National Library / Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa. Since the
1990s it has been the custom to sing New Zealand's national anthem
God Defend New Zealand[
1] in both Māori and English, which has exposed the term
Aotearoa to a wider audience.
*In
1940 Douglas Lilburn composed one of his most famous orchestral works, the overture
Aotearoa, which quickly became one of his most popular compositions, and was played by orchestras both in New Zealand and in
Great Britain. This made the term more widely known.
*The term gained a wider international audience in
1981 with
Split Enz's single "Six Months in a Leaky Boat", which contained the lyric:
Aotearoa, rugged individual/glistens like a pearl/at the bottom of the world.
*
Aotearoa CafeHuia Tangata Kotahi (newspaper), 8 February 1893, Number 1.
